LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

lincolniann £ ^S^ 
Chap. (!o])vnu-lit Nor- 

Shell- .5) 81, 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. T 



LINCOLN AT WORK 




ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
Eiij^ravcil fidiii tlif larc piiiit ii'terrcd to (in jia.Lre 43. 



Lincoln at Work 



sketches from Life 



BY 



WILLIAM O. STODDARD 



Illustrated by Sears Gallagher 




United Society of Christian Endeavor 
Boston and Chicago 



5G416 





l.ibr».< y of Conu'^«a 


U:,- 




"Wt. tUf«: Ktcli'EO 






OCT 4 1900 




N,f^^^^.e< 






Str.OND COPY. 






0»-4«v«r«1 tr 






OhDtH DIVISION, 






OCT 18 1900 




Copyright, 1900 




by the 




United 


Society ok Christian Endeavor 



CONTENTS 



List op Illustrations 
Preface .... 

I. A Country Politician 

II, A Trial by Spade 

III. Very Dry Grass 

IV. Portraits of Lincoln 
V. A Forgotten Hero 

VI. The Dark Work-Room 

VII. Writing to the President 

VIII. The Night Council 

IX. The Sideboard and the White House 

X. The Sentry at the Gate 

XI. The Messenger to the President 

XII. THE Wrestling-Match . 

XIII. Uncle Sam's Web-Feet 

XIV. Lincoln's Great Discovery 
XV. Take That to Stanton 

XVI, The Voice of the South 



page 

. 7 

9 

. 11 

20 

. 31 

42 

. 52 

60 

71 

82 

92 

102 

. 113 

124 

. 135 

145 

. 154 

164 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

Portrait of Lincoln . . Frontispiece. 

" How ARE YOU TO-DAY, DoC ? " , . .13 

" Now THE SPADE WAS UP IN THE AIR " . ,29 

" All HIS SOUL was aflame " . . .39 

"The muzzle went crashing through that 

pane" . . . . . .56 

The President and the Pins . . .63 

" John, just tell that story over again " .68 
"I don't believe Mr. Lincoln can be at all 

aware of this " . . . ,74 

" It 's not there, your excellency " . .84 

"It was a curiously informal council " .89 

Portrait of Mrs. Lincoln . . Facing page 99 
"Put OUT DOT cigar-r-r! " .... 107 
"It could n't be called a council of war " 

Facing page 117 
" Every whit as supreme as ever " . . 134 

" What do YOU THINK OF IT ? " . . . 143 

" Grant IS THE first general I 'VE had " . 150 

General Grant ..... 153 

" Every ear was husked by a union soldier " . 158 
"Read that!" ..... 163 

" Lincoln is dead ! Lincoln is dead ! " . 169 

7 




Preface. 

;OME time after the sketches of which 
this volume is composed began to 
make their appearance in The 
Christian Endeavor World, an in- 
telligent woman inquired of the author : — 

" Please tell me, did Mr. Lincoln seem a 
great man to those who were most intimately 
associated with him in every-day life ? Or 
was he only great at a distance, or in retro- 
spect? Did he seem great to you, as you met 
him daily at the White House ? " 

" As to that, madam," I replied, " I discov- 
ered, in after years, that I had seen and studied 
his greatness much more fully, perhaps more 
critically, than I was then aware. One strong 
impression was left upon my mind indelibly. 
I saw him on various occasions, under varied 
circumstances, surrounded by or in conference 
with the foremost men of his day. Among 
them were his cabinet officers, Senators, Con- 
gressmen, jurists, governors of States, scholars, 
literary men, military and naval celebrities, 
foreign ambassadors. Of many of these men 



10 PREFACE 

I had myself formed previously even exagger- 
ajted estimates. I took note, however, of one 
inevitable, unfailing phenomenon. Ever}^ man 
of them seemed suddenly to diminish in size 
the moment he in any manner came into com- 
parison with Mr. Lincoln. Another curious 
thing was that all the really ablest men among 
them were aware, consciously or unconsciously, 
of the superior strength confronting them. 
Of course there were those who consented to 
say and even to record that they considered 
him defective, if not weak. They believed 
that they had read him, measured him ; they 
regretted that the affairs of the nation were 
not in more capable hands, — their own, for 
instance." 

" There," she exclaimed, " I am glad to hear 
you say so. I wonder if I should know a great 
man if I happened to meet one." 

" It is not likely that you would," I told her. 
" Not unless you saw him actually doing 
something that nobody else could do. You 
would perceive his greatness then, if you saw 
him at work " 

"That's it," she said. "Mr. Stoddard, I'd 
like to see Abraham Lincoln at his work ! " 
William O. Stoddard. 

lladinon, N. J., 3Iay /6, /goo. 





A Coimf]^ Politic 



^^^^HAT whole job pied? The care- 
less young imp ! What on earth 
made him meddle with it ? And 
here I am, with a column leader 
to write, and all the news to make up ! " 

" It can't be helped, now, and we want to 
get to press early to-morrow. Big edition. 
It's pied awful ! " 

The young printer who was looking at the 
wreck of types with such an air of dismay was 
evidently the editor also of the weekly journal 
which he was preparing for the press. He was 
of medium height, with dark hair and a pair 
of saucy ej^es. He stepped around, moreover, 
with the somewhat jaunty, half-defiant air 
which Avas likely, perhaps, to distinguish a far- 
Western journalist with local disturbances close 
at hand. 

It was a hot June day, and he was in his 
shirt and trousers. His shirt-sleeves were 
rolled up to the shoulder, and his hands were 
black with printer's ink. 

The printing-office was in the second story 
of a large frame building that shook timor- 
11 



12 LINCOLN AT WORK 

ously "whenever the press was running or a 
good breeze blowing. Below, in front, was a 
flourishing dry-goods concern. In the rear of 
this was the editorial sanctum, and this also 
served for the office of a physician who was a 
principal owner of the journal. 

This gentleman was now standing at his 
desk, apparently occupied in the manufacture 
of pills. Short, thin, wiry, with a pugilistic 
exj^ression of face, he had persisted in wearing, 
even in summer, a gorgeously flowered plush 
waistcoat. 

Somebody came in at the wide-open door at 
this moment, almost filling it, he was so very 
tall. He was a powerful -looking, sallow-faced, 
clean-shaven man of middle age. He wore a 
high silk hat, somewhat foxy, and an elderly 
black suit. 

" How are you to-day. Doc ? " he inquired, 
but he could hardly have heard the medical 
man's soliloquy over his pills. 

"Humph! What on earth is he here for? 
He is n't enough of an Abolitionist to suit me. 
He's at work on this 'ere ncAV party, but he 
can't make it go. 'T is n't in him ! How are 
you ? " he nevertheless responded aloud, as he 
turned to shake hands with his tall visitor. 
" Sit down. Cool olf. Awful hot day. How 
are politics ? " 



A COUNTRY POLITICIAN 



13 



The newcomer's hat was off, and he took a 
chair, mopping his broad, deeply wrinkled fore- 
head with a red bandanna handkerchief. 




" How ARE YOU TO-DAY, DoC? " 



" Well, Doc, I 'd say that American politics 
need a heap of doctoring, just now. I want 
to see that young man of the Gazette. They 
tell me that he knows about everybody in the 



14 LINCOLN AT WORK 

county. I want to know how things are run- 
ning. Can you fetch him ? If you can, bring 
him out." 

" He's up-stairs, now," replied the doctor. 
" He's as busy as a bee, though. What do you 
want to know ? " 

" Well, I 'd kind o' like to have a talk with 
him. Call him down. Doc ? " 

" Ye — es," drawled the doctor. " He can 
come, if you really want to see him. Speak- 
ing of politics, though, I want to say one thing 
'bout myself, right here. I'm not any sort of 
half-way man. I'm an out-and-out Abolition- 
ist." 

The tall man laughed, in a quiet, peculiar 
way. He seemed to be amused, but the doctor 
was not, and he went up the stairs with the 
air of a man who was not well pleased with 
his errand. 

" I say ! " he blurted, as he reached the upper 
floor. " Come down. The old man is here 
and wants to see ye. You 'd best come, but 
you can't make anything out of him. I s'pose 
you know 'bout what, he is. He was in Con- 
gress once " 

" Hang it ! " responded the irritated man at 
the pied job. " I can't leave this. I have n't 
a minute to spare." 

" Come along ! " urged his friend. " You 



A COUNTRY POLITICIAN 15 

are looking like sin ! Can't you brush up a 
little ? Put on your coat." 

" Ko, I won't. Not for him or anybody 
else. Not this hot day. I '11 come as I am, or 
I won't come at all. What do you suppose 
he '11 care how I look ? " 

" Why, man alive, you 're all ink. Some on 
your face, where you wiped it. No collar on. 
Worst-looking critter " 

"Tell you what, then, Doctor," said the 
editor, " I '11 compromise. I '11 wash my hands, 
but I won't roll down my shirt-sleeves. Tell 
him I 'm coming." 

There was a musical chuckle near the desk 
in the room below, for the conversation up- 
stairs had not been carried on in a whisper. 

Down came the doctor to report, and to put 
pills into little boxes, and to measure powders 
with a horn spoon, and his tall visitor chatted 
away with him pleasantly. 

The printer left his job rebelliously, and 
scrubbed at his ink-stains as if he loved them 
and preferred having them where they were. 
Sharp rubbing with a crash towel followed, 
and his toilet was completed. Nevertheless, 
there was a half-bashful flush upon his face 
when he came down into the sanctum, for the 
gentleman he was to meet was really a man of 
some distinction, — that is, in his OAvn State, 



16 LINCOLN AT WORK 

but not outside of it. He was considered a 
good lawyer, and had been active as a political 
manager. It was generally understood, just 
at this time, however, that he had utterly 
ruined his political career, for the future, by 
the extraordinary, half-crazy blunders which 
he had recently been making. 

" How are you ? " he said to the young man, 
somewhat as if he had known him'from child- 
hood. " I won't bother you long, but you can 
tell me a few little things that I want to know. 
You keep track of the drift of the county poli- 
tics, and you can say how the people are 
going." 

" No— o," put in the young editor. " They 're 
not going, just now. Half of 'em don't know 
where they are, and the other half are nailed 
down to their old notions." 

"Just so!" exclaimed the visitor. "It's 
just so everywhere else. Now I want to take 
this county up by the townships, one by one. 
How, for example, is Lost Grove township ? " 

"That? Why, that's old Mack's. Only 
two newspapers taken there. Only four men 
and an old woman that can read even them. 
He owns the distillery. The voters get their 
tickets from him every time. He 's quarrelling 
with the pro-slavery men, though, about his 
hiring some free niggers. If he should make 



A COUNTRY POLITICIAN 17 

up his mind to hire two or three more, you 
can count on that township, solid, for this 
once." 

"Just so," laughed the visitor. "And now, 
how about Turney's and all along the South 
Fork ? " 

" O ! The Egyptians ! They're all voting 
for General Jackson yet." 

" They have n't heard that he 's dead ? " 
slowly drawled the tall politician. " That 's 
the trouble with a good many people. But 
they 're all going to be waked up pretty soon. 
And now how about " So he went care- 
fully on, exhibiting a minuteness of local 
knowledge of persons and things that was 
remarkable. From townships he came down 
to villages, to hamlets, to individual men and 
their antecedents, as if at some previous time 
he had compiled a directory of all that region. 

The young editor was now sitting with his 
bare elbows resting upon the doctor's table, 
gazing absorbedly into the deeply marked, un- 
handsome, but wonderfully intelligent, face of 
the man before him. 

The doctor ? O ! They had both forgotten 
him. JSTt) sooner had this pair entered upon 
their uninteresting cross-examination than he 
had picked up his leather medicine-case and 
walked, out in silence. The tall politician must 



18 LINCOLN AT WORK 

also have almost forgotten the young editor 
himself, for he shortly talked on as if half so- 
liloquizing. He seemed to be employing the 
statistics of that county as a sample study for 
the understanding of the condition of scores of 
others, and of the State, and of other States, 
and of the whole country. He even picked up 
a pencil and jotted down the figures of rough 
estimates, his readings of political possibilities. 

The pied job lay deserted upon the imposing- 
stone, up-stairs, while the Western country pol- 
itician was in this manner wasting his own 
time and that of the absorbed young printer. 
The typesetters would soon be calling for copy, 
and the proposed " leader " was yet unwritten. 

The day was drifting on toward noon, when 
the visitor at last arose, and he shook hands 
heartily as he said to his new adherent : 
" Thank you. I '11 see you again some day. 
Stump your district. Do all you can for good 
organization. "VVe shall win yet. You may 
be sure of that. Such a cause as ours cannot 
fail." 

" I believe that ! " almost shouted the young 
man. " But, Mr. Lincoln, it's an awful up-hill 
tramp, just now." 

" The top o' the hill is nearer to climb than 
some folks think it is." 

Out he went, and the printer was about to 



A COUNTRY POLITICIAN 19 

ascend the stairs when the doctor stepped in 
through a door from the dry-goods store. 

" Hollo ! " he inquired. " Is Old Abe gone ? 
I reckon you did n't manage to make much out 
of him. He 's kind o' played out, he is. We 've 
got to look round for somebody else to take 
the lead o' things." 

The editor shook his head, and went up with- 
out replying, for he was still under the tre- 
mendous fascination of the tall man's person- 
ality. He walked slowly to the pied job, and 
began to finger it. 

" So," he muttered, " that's Old Abe. I 've 
heard a great deal about him, but I never saw 
him before. I reckon I w^ant to see him again. 
He seems to know exactly what all our people 
are made of, man by man. I 'm glad I 've had 
a talk with Abraham Lincoln." 




A TRIAL BY SPADE 



III 



E'S going to be hung ! " 

"Well, he ought to be. He 
il killed him." 

" What on earth did he kill him 
for, right there in the store ? " 

" He wanted his money. You see, the fellow 
was there to buy cattle. He had lots of cash 
with him. It was the easiest thing in the 
world to knock him down with a spade, gather 
the money, jump on a horse that was ready, 
and ride away." 

" But they caught him." 

" That was his blunder. More men at hand 
than he counted on. They had pluck, too, and 
they grappled him. Two of 'em were power- 
ful strong men. Now he 's going to suffer for 
it. Going to 'tend the trial ? " 

" Of course I am. I would n't miss it for 
anything. Who 's to defend him ? " 

" Nobody, as yet. They '11 'point some law- 
yer or other, for form's sake. That is, if he 
isn't lynched first. There's right smart o' 
talk, among the neighbors, of stringing him 
right up." 

20 



A TRIAL BY SPADE 21 

Everybody else was talking about it in just 
that way, and I kept my word about going 
down by rail to see how that trial would turn 
out. I had never seen a murder trial in all 
my life, and I wanted to know how it was 
done, especially in a clear case like this. 

There was a crowd in the county town, just 
as I knew there would be. 

There were nearly as many women as men, 
and some of them brought their knitting. 
Quite a number were of the new kind of peo- 
ple from the Eastern States, but most were old 
settlers that knew each other at sight. The 
new people and the old sort could be told 
ajjart by once looking at them. Every soul, 
anyhow, seemed to know all about the murder, 
and they were more than ready to tell what 
they knew. Not any of them had seen the 
murderer yet, but nobody had any pity for 
him. It was so awfully wicked a thing for 
him to do. 

It was away down in middle Illinois, and it 
is pretty hot there, sometimes, in summer. It 
was hot that day, and the crowd looked red- 
faced and wilted. I heard one man say that 
as for him, if he was that convict, he 'd rather 
be shot at once than to have to wait, and know 
all the while that the rope was getting ready, 
and to have to face the judge and the jury, 



22 LINCOLN AT WORK 

and his fellow citizens, and to hear the evi- 
dence closing in on him. 

The courtroom was a big one, all dingy and 
whittled up, and the windows were all open 
to let in what air there was. Every square 
foot of room for sitting and standing was oc- 
cupied early. They took the prisoner in at 
the back door ; and then there was a buzz, 
everybody trying to get a look at him. The 
women all told each other Avhat they thought 
about his ferocious face. 

He was a very short, stocky, common-look- 
ing man, and his face was quite ugly, as if 
he felt savage and rebellious instead of being 
meekly resigned to receive the just reward of 
his crime. That told against him right away. 
He was hardened, and the women in particular 
had expected him to show some signs of re- 
pentance. So they took off their hats and 
bonnets, and squared themselves to what was 
coming. Not more than a dozen of the men 
in that room, except the lawyers, had their 
coats on. Some few of their shirts were kind 
of white, but more were homespun hickory or 
red flannel. 

The judge was behind his desk by this time. 
He was a large, heavy man, Avith bushy eye- 
brows, and he was hard and stern in the face, 
like a readv-made sentence of death. The 



A TRIAL BY SPADE 23 

district attorney was a prime good lawyer. 
He was a little pale and nervous just now, as 
any fellow ought to be when he knows 
that his next official duty is practically to kill 
a human being. He had other good counsel 
to help him do his job, though. They had vol- 
unteered for public spirit. 

The murderer sat down in his place with 
the shadows of death settling around him and 
with hundreds of pairs of eyes staring at him. 
His counsel sat near him. He had only one, a 
man from away up the State, who had offered 
to come down and defend him without pay. 
That was right, and a good thing for him to 
do. It would make the trial go off regu- 
larly, and nobody could complain. It was 
only fair to the murderer to give him all his 
lawful chances, although, as everybody knew, 
he had not any. 

He was one of the tallest men you ever saw, 
that lawyer. He was dressed in a thin black 
suit that was not new by any means, and he 
was clean-shaved. The men that watched him 
closest were the jury ; but he hardly seemed to 
look at them, and it made some of them sit 
around uneasy. Men in a jury-box always 
like to be treated with some consideration by 
counsel on either side of the case. This 
lawyer laughed, too, once or twice, and the 



24 LINCOLN AT WORK 

whole crowd felt angry when they saw him do 
that, at so solemn a time, with his own client 
about to be sentenced to be hanged by the 
neck until he was dead. 

The preliminaries were all cut short by the 
judge, and then the witnesses were put upon 
the stand, one by one. There were only three 
of them that had actually seen the murder 
done. They were all well dressed and looked 
fresh. They were real " likely-looking " fel- 
lows, respectable and as honest as the day ; 
and they all told precisely the same story, to a 
hair's breadth. 

The murdered man, as they had all seen, and 
now minutely testified, had been stricken 
down with an ordinary spade, and the deadly 
weapon Avas produced, with blood-stains on it, 
and was duly examined by the judge and by 
each man of the jury. In strong hands it was 
evidently a very deadly weapon, for it was 
new and its steel blade was sharp. 

The accused was a very muscular man, able 
to strike a skull-cleaving blow. His face now 
grew sullen and ferocious as he looked at the 
spade and listened to the death-dealing testi- 
mony. The work of the district attorney and 
his helpers in questioning the witnesses was 
thorough, precise, and perfect. Their several 
accounts were brought out to absolute agree- 



A TRIAL BY SPADE 25 

ment. The audience breathed more and more 
freely all the while, and the women knitted 
faster, and nodded at one another approvingly. 
This murder had happened precisely as they all 
knew that it had happened. 

A bumblebee that came in at a window and 
went buzzing around the head of the judge, and 
then across to the jury, was of about as much 
importance as would be anything the prisoner's 
counsel could think up to say after all the tes- 
timony was in. 

During all this time, moreover, he had been 
taking the most curious, senseless kind of 
course. He had asked a great many questions, 
as his duty was, of each of the witnesses ; but 
all of his questions and all the answers he 
brought out had made it look a great deal as 
if he had been hired to help the district at- 
torney convict that man. He was only driv- 
ing nail after nail, so to speak, into the coffin 
of his unlucky client. Poor fellow, he was, 
after all, with nobody really trying to defend 
him and not one friend in the courtroom. 

The murderer was proved to be very poor, 
ignorant, and of questionable moral or reli- 
gious character. In the middle front part of 
the store had been an upright supporting post, 
and by this the cattle-buyer had been standing 
at the moment when he was cut down. One 



26 LINCOLN AT WORK 

of the witnesses had been behind the counter 
on the right ; another, behind the counter on 
the left ; the third had been in the front door- 
way. The striker had stood back by another 
similar post, against which a stack of new 
spades had been leaning. One of these he had 
taken up and had used to do the killing with. 

The counsel for the defence, to do him 
justice, had at least taken the pains to visit 
the country store. He had taken closely care- 
ful measurements with a tape line which he 
now took out of his pocket and showed to the 
jury. To all these measurements he had ob- 
tained the sworn testimony of the three chief 
witnesses and of two other men. He made 
them almost tediously accurate. With his 
help, therefore, the net of convicting evidence 
was at last complete, and his client was all 
tangled up hopelessly in it. The audience, too, 
felt that they and the jury were in the net ; 
and they were entirely satisfied. 

" What will he, can he, have to say ? " they 
whispered one to another; but the women 
stopped their knitting when the district at- 
torney arose to sum up, and a very curious, 
unaccountable change took place in the face 
of the judge. He actually smiled and fanned 
himself, and looked half-way comfortable. 

The summing-up was eloquent and able, and 



A TRIAL BY SPADE 27 

the district attorney sat down at last a very 
much admired and popular lawyer. 

Now came the time for the murderer's 
counsel to finish his work of giving up his 
client to sure justice. Of course, it was to be 
expected that he would make a big appeal for 
mercy and try to stir up the humane feelings 
of the jury ; but he could see by the set look 
on their faces that they were not exactly that 
kind of men. It was not going to be of any 
use. He stood up, and he was by all odds 
the tallest man in the room, Now he made 
his short client stand up by him, and the man's 
head came only to his shoulder. He took the 
spade itself and held it against the murderer's 
side, as if he were carefully comparing their 
lengths. 

Just then I could hear a Avhisper away 
across the room, by the door, it was so 
still. " Something's coming, now ! He is al- 
ways great before a jury ! " 

The gaze with which that poor, doomed 
fellow looked up into the face of his defender 
just then was awfully sad and earnest and kind 
of pleading. His lips quivered, too ; but they 
grew firm again and a sort of faith and hope 
began to dawn in his eyes. He sat down, and 
the tape line came out of his lawyer's pocket 
again. He began to talk . to the jury in a 



28 LINCOLN AT WORK 

familiar, neighborly way, as if they all knew 
him and he knew all of them. He went on, 
then, with a dull, prosy reiteration of the 
testimony, now and then stooping down and 
measuring with his tape line upon the floor. 

He described with accurate details the 
counters and the other furniture and the 
general contents of that country store. He 
made us see and fix in our minds the exact 
places occupied by each and every one of the 
human beings who had been in it at the mo- 
ment when the spade came cleaving down 
upon the head of the cattle-buyer. The court- 
room and everything in that had somehow 
vanished, and we were all in the store, stand- 
ing around and seeing the murder done. It 
grew awfully vivid and exciting, and some of 
the women were almost ready to scream \vhen 
the hit actually came ; for now the spade was 
up in the air at the end of the tall lawyer's 
very long arm, and he was about to kill the 
cattle-buyer, there where he stood. 

" Gentlemen of the jury," he suddenly ex- 
claimed, " by the sworn testimony of all these 
witnesses, each man of them parroting the 
same story, the murdered man stood exactly 
there ! The murderer stood precisely here ! " 

He struck furiously with the spade, as far as 
he could reach, and its point was buried in 



A TRIAL BY SPADE 



29 



the floor less than half-way between those 
two supporting posts. We could just see 
theni and the men that stood by each of 
them. 

" Gentlemen of the jury," he shouted, " my 
client is a short man. I am a tall man. I 




Drawn by Victor A. Scarles. 

"Now THE SPADE WAS UP IN THE AIR." 



could not have done it. He could not have 
done it. He did not do it ! Somebody else did 
it, then and there." 

Clear, ringing, fiercely angry, was his last 
triumphant declaration. He threw the spade, 
loudly clanging, down upon the floor; and, 



30 LINCOLN AT WORK 

as he sat down in his chair, the judge himself 
all but laughed aloud and the jury looked 
happy. It appeared as if they were rather 
glad, after all, to see their Avay to give a ver- 
dict of not guilty, without leaving the jury- 
box. 

I do not remember what afterward became 
of the case. That defence, however, was a 
pretty good example of Abraham Lincoln's 
way of getting hold of the minds of men and 
bringing them around to see the truth of any 
matter he was arguing. 

Only a few years after that, he had the 
whole country for a courtroom. He won his 
case, too, but it was the last he ever tried, and 
to this day we all see that Union matter exactly 
as he did. 











HE undulating plain to which the 
early French explorers gave the 
name of Grand Prairie began some- 
where in Indiana, and extended 
westward nearly to the Mississippi River. 
Many a long year ago, I was one day riding 
over the central part of this plain, as yet un- 
broken by any ploughing. The road I was 
following was- an old buffalo-path, and the tall 
grass on each side was dry and yellow under the 
bright November sunshine. The weather had 
been calm, but a wind from the north was rising. 
I was a smoker then, and I reined in my 
horse to light a cigar. The match I lighted 
was a long-legged, blue-headed fellow ; and, as 
the Havana kindled, I dropped the lucif er with- 
out thinking of first extinguishing it. Near 
my horse's hoofs, however, was a dense bunch 
of dry grass and rosinweeds, very much as if 
it had been put there to receive that match. 
" I will give him a rest," I thought, and the 
animal was willing, but in a moment more he 
snorted and stepped quickly away. 

31 



32 LINCOLN AT WORK 

It was not the wind which had startled liim, 
although that had suddenly blown a stronger 
breath, as if it were promising a gale. A puff 
of black smoke, and out of the smoke a tongue 
of angry fire sprung up from the combustible 
vegetation, and the horse turned his head and 
whinnied his surprise as he stared at that 
blaze. Higher rose the wind ; and swiftl}' 
awa}^, spreading to right and left, flashed the 
fierce red line of the rising conflagration. In 
a few minutes more it was bounding off 
southward, uncontrollably. On the short grass 
rolls of the prairie it swept like a fler}^ mow- 
ing-machine, and in the deep hollows and dry 
sloughs, where the blue grass and rosinweeds 
were tall and densel}' grown, it sprung into the 
air four fathoms high, with aloud, triumphant 
roar. It would die out only away off yonder, 
against some watercourse, perhaps leaving 
nothing unburned behind it. 

Now, I was not the inventor or creator of 
the dry grass, the north wind, or the lucifer 
match ; and there would have been no prairie 
fire at all if everything had not been made 
ready beforehand without me. This is pre- 
cisely the way in which Abraham Lincoln ob- 
tained his first nomination for President of the 
United States. There were then, and have 
been even in recent da3^s, individuals and 



VERY DRY GRASS 33 

cliques and '"committees" aspiring to fnme, 
who liave modestly claimed the honor of hav- 
ing- discovered Mr. Lincoln and secured for 
him his opportunity at Chicago. 

The political fact is, tbat, when the Eepub- 
lican National Convention came together in 
that city in 18G0, only one question seemed to 
be before it, after manufacturing the party 
platforms. This was, Shall the candidate be 
from the East or from the West ? If from the 
former, it must be Mr. Seward ; and that as- 
surance gave at once to a Western choice all 
the many Eastern jealousies which his splendid 
career had there aroused against him. The 
question therefore was practically settled be- 
fore a ballot was taken. The preliminary 
complimentary ballotings were as if the East 
did but honor Mr. Seward while inviting the 
West to name its own candidate. He was al- 
ready named, not by the prominent politicians, 
or any man of them, but by the people at 
large, speaking for themselves through what is 
called the country press, — the rural journals, 
not the great city dailies. 

There were at that time in Illinois, then the 
pivotal State of the West, two men who dur- 
ing many years and through successive political 
contests had grown to be the unquestioned 
representatives of their respective parties. 



34 LINCOLN AT WORK 

Stephen A. Douglas was " The Little Giant " 
of the Democrac}^, and his fame and power 
had long since become national. He, indeed, 
had a party of his own, and had so far out- 
grown the old pro-slavery conservatism that it 
was already rebelling against him. Abraham 
Lincoln, the acknowledged leader of the Whigs, 
was in like manner outgrowing his party, and 
was even to leave a large part of it behind 
him. He was known to be adopting ideas and 
assuming a position which would enable a new 
party, drawn from both of the old, to rally 
around him. 

All readers of political history need only to 
refresh their memories a little as to the really 
wonderful character of the Lincoln-Douglas 
stump debates in the Illinois campaign of 
1858. When these were ended, Mr. Lincoln's 
already established rank in the West had be- 
come recognized by the entire country. When 
we pass from these debates to the recorded 
impression make by Mr. Lincoln's great speech 
at Cooper Institute in New York City, Feb- 
ruary 27, 1860, an inquiry instantly suggests 
itself. Why did so vast a concourse of the 
best citizens of New York and New England 
gather to hear for the first time an entirely 
new man ? Why did they look at him and 
listen with such intense interest, saying to one 



VEBY DBF GEASS 35 

another, " This is our probable candidate for 
president of the United States " ? The reason 
was not as yet altogether clearly understood 
or acknowledged by themselves, certainly not 
finally accepted by the friends of other emi- 
nent Republican statesmen, East or West. 
Nevertheless, it was because the people of the 
Mississippi valley had already nominated Mr. 
Lincoln, in so plain-spoken and unanimous a 
fashion that their decision could not possibly 
be set aside. So powerful was the impression 
which they had made that Mr. Lincoln's 
Cooper Institute speech took upon itself some- 
what of the character of a prefatory inaugural 
address. 

A lighted match had long since been dropped 
into an immense field of combustible thought 
and feeling, and a strong north wind had been 
blowing the kindled fire. The Central Illinois 
Gazette was a weekly journal of large circu- 
lation, printed at the young town of West 
Urbana, afterward named Champaign, in Mr. 
Lincoln's own judicial district, the eighth, of 
Illinois. It was mainly owned by a well- 
known physician of that place, an enthusi- 
astic anti-slavery man ; and its sole editor was 
a young man who had grown up in New York 
as a disciple of Mr. Seward. I had, however, 
worked under Mr. Lincoln, both as editor and 



36 LINCOLN AT WORK 

stump speaker, through the memorable cam- 
paign of 1858. I had acquired great admira- 
tion for him without at all as yet understand- 
ing what manner of man he might be. It has 
since appeared that all his other friends, espe- 
cially his very best and most intimate friends, 
had advanced to a somewhat similar position 
regarding him. I had been, however, a curious 
student of notable men from childhood, and 
had been led to make mental analyses of 
quite a large number of them on actual sight 
and hearing. 

Champaign was then little more than the 
railway-station half of the very old settlement 
of Urbana, the " county town." In the eai-iy 
spring of 1859, Mr. Lincoln came, as usual, to 
attend to his law cases before the county 
court. He took rooms at the railway hotel, 
the Doane House, where I was then boarding. 

One day, the doctor and I had a contro- 
versy, and almost a collision, as to the political 
course which the Gazette should henceforth 
take, the especial point being the name of our 
presidential candidate. I was not ready to 
name anybod}^, and he was ; but Mr. Lincoln 
had not been spoken of by either of us. 
Neither had he as yet been mentioned by 
anybod}'^ else; and no other journal, large or 
small, had printed so much as a paragraph sug- 



VEBY DRY GRASS 37 

gesting his candidacy. If an\^ political leader 
had thought of him, he had prudently con- 
cealed what may be termed his first suspicions. 

Very early, the next morning after my com- 
bat with the doctor, Mr. Lincoln went to the 
post-oiRce for his mail. He came back with 
his tall stovepipe hat as nearly full as it must 
sometimes have been in the days when he was 
postmaster of Salem, and had no other place 
from which to distribute the correspondence 
of that very small city. It may well have 
been the same hat, so far as any appearance 
of fashion or newness was concerned. The 
morning was chilly, and a fire was burning in 
the huge ''[egg stove" in the middle of the 
hotel office. He picked up a much-whittled 
wooden armchair, and drew it in front of the 
stove. He sat down, put his feet on the hearth, 
tipped back the chair, lodged his hat between 
his knees, and began to open and read his 
letters. 

While he was thus employed, already ab- 
sorbed, paying no attention to anybody or 
anything else, I came out from my breakfast 
in the hotel dining-room adjoining the office. 
No other soul was here but Mr. Lincoln ; and 
at first, as a matter of course, I was about to 
speak to him. My head, however, was at the 
moment full of my controversy soon to be re- 



38 LINCOLN AT WORK 

newed ^A'^ith my business partner, for such the 
doctor was ; and I paused at the office desk 
for the reader to finish the paper just then in 
his hand. 

The next instant, I myself became deeply 
interested in that letter. It seemed to be 
composed of several wide pages of closely 
written, black-lettered, crabbed handwriting; 
and it made Mr. Lincoln throw his head back 
and shut his eyes, as if to keep the world out 
while he was thinking. An expression grew 
in his dark, strongly jnarked features that I 
had never seen there before. Perhaps nobody 
else had ever seen quite so much. His eyes 
opened once or twice, but not to see anything 
in that room. It was rather as if he was look- 
ing across the Atlantic Ocean or into futurity. 
They closed again, and the blood went out of 
his face, leaving it livid, sallow, and gloomy as 
night. I watched him, struck with sudden 
astonishment, until the color came back like a 
swift return of departed life. It was as if a 
great fire had been kindled in a human light- 
house ; all his soul was aflame, and his face 
was but a window glowing with radiance that 
made it brilliant. Never yet had I seen any- 
thing like that upon the countenance of a hu- 
man being, and the conviction came flashing 
into my mind : " That 's the greatest man 



VEEY DRY GRASS 



39 



you ever saw. Yes, sir ! That 's a great 
man ! " 

I had no longer any idea of saying anything 
to Mr. Lincoln, however, and I very silently 
slipped out of the Doane House. From there, 




"All hls soul was aflame." 



without pausing to consult Avith anybody, I 
Inirried to the Gazette office. The doctor had 
arrived before me, and was sitting at his own 
table, measuring out powders with a spoon. 
"Doctor!" I said, with much energy, "I've 



40 LINCOLN AT WORK 

made up my mind for whom we're going to go 
for president ! " 

" You don't say ! Who is it ? " 

" Abraham Lincoln, of Illinois ! " 

The spoon dropped, spilling some powders. 

" What ? Old Abe ? Nonsense ! We might 
go for him for vice-president. He '11 never do 
for any more'n that. Seward and Lincoln 
would n't be a bad ticket. Who on earth put 
that into your head ? " 

" He did ! " I shouted. " 'T is of no use, 
Doctor. Lincoln 's the man ! I '11 get off this 
number of the Gazette^ and then I'm off to 
Springfield and Blooraington, to get materials 
for a campaign-life editorial." 

The doctor disputed ; but he yielded, as was 
somewhat customary in that office. That 
number of the Gazette Avas turned off, and I 
went to Springfield and Bloomington. The 
needed information Avas obtained from Mr. 
Herndon, Mr. Leonard Swett, and others, and 
the editorial was printed. As I remember, it 
was only about'two columns in length ; but an 
experiment was tried with it. The Gazette's 
regular exchange list was large, but hundreds 
of extra copies of that next issue were sent all 
over the West, and went to many Eastern 
journals. 

The return mails in due succession brought 



VERY DRY GRASS 41 

a great and complete surprise. Almost all of 
the country papers, and some of the city 
dailies, to which the marked Gazette had been 
sent gave it special notice of a favorable 
character, more or less pronounced. A great 
number of them reprinted the editorial in 
whole or in part, and scores of them at once 
put Mr. Lincoln's name at the head of their 
columns. The match, small as it was, had 
been thrown into very dry grass, and the gale 
Avas rising rapidly. AYhen, shortly afterward, 
some of the managing politicians awoke and 
looked out of their windows, they saw the en- 
tire West kindling, without any help what- 
ever, for the nomination of Abraham Lincoln. 
Nobody anywhere deserved any particular 
credit for recognizing an established fact, and 
the fire in due time swept over the entire 
country. 






ortraife of ICmco 



T^UI^^HEEE are portraits, and yet, in a 
meaning which we may well wish 
the term to have, there are no por- 
traits. There are only imperfect 
resemblances or likenesses. JSTo two men ever 
saw the same landscape or even the same tree, 
nor did any man ever see the same landscape 
twice. 

Nothing, it is said, can be more accurate 
than a really good photograph. Perhaps it is 
so, but nothing else can be more unsatisfactory, 
unless it may be the next absolutely perfect 
sun-picture of the same subject. The process 
and its results are mechanical, material ; and 
the best that was ever obtained by them Avas 
a good representation of the man or woman, 
for instance, at one moment of time and under 
given conditions. The picture will preserve 
only an external expression which was upon 
the face before the camera, and this is indeed 
a great deal. 

The portrait-painter, the very best, brings 
out upon his canvas nothing more than his 
42 



PORTRAITS OF LINCOLN 43 

own general perception, shallow or deep, as. 
the case may be. 

On my wall yonder hangs a very rare, im- 
perial-size photographic print of Mr. Lincoln, 
one of about half a dozen that were copied, 
enlarged, from a Brady negative ; and then 
the original plate and all other copies were 
destroyed by fire. Mr. Lincoln was evidently 
thinking of something else while Mr. Brady 
was aiming at him ; and therefore the result 
was excellent, the best with which I am ac- 
quainted. There may be others as good, each 
of them giving a variation belonging to an- 
other moment of time. If all, of every name 
and time, were gathered by some patriotic col- 
lector and arranged in a good light together, 
any one Avho knew Mr. Lincoln ver}'' well 
might pass along the line from one to another, 
complimenting each in turn, yet still hunting 
in vain for something in his memory, some- 
thing he had at some time noted as he looked 
into the living face. 

Do you say tliat this is only the reiteration, 
the application, of a well-known general truth 
or principle of art ? 

No doubt you are right, but it sometimes 
seems a cause for regret that future students 
of American history may not know the great 
President better by means of some presentation 



44 LINCOLN AT WORK 

of his face as it appeared when his soul was 
hard at work and his brain was on fire. Xo 
artist has ever caught that expression, and the 
same is true, indeed, of a liost of other historic- 
ally notable faces. 

Do you ask me, by way of illustration, 
what particular moment or occasion brought 
out that which I so much wish had been pre- 
served ? 

I was thinking of that. I studied his face 
during his delivery of his first inaugural ad- 
dress, at the eastern front of the Capitol at 
Washington. I had waited during several 
hours, with the vast throngs growing and 
surging behind me, while I clung vigorously 
to the position I had })reempted in the front 
line below, to be as near as possible. Every 
change of his intensely earnest features, as he 
spoke so eloquently to his countrymen and to 
all the world, would have been worth preserv- 
ing. Even memory cannot keep them all, 
however, and I know what the portrait-paint- 
ers mean by their doctrine of striking an aver- 
age and melting all of a man's many faces into 
one, — a kind of facial composite. 

I can remember other notable occasions, but 
they were not connected with national circum- 
stances to such a degree or in such a manner 
as was the inaugural address. That is, with 



PORTRAITS OF LINCOLN 45 

one exception. Not so veiy long after that I 
saw upon Mr. Lincoln's face something which 
even a photographic artist might have pre- 
served if he and his camera had been there 
ready for instantaneous action and without 
the knowledge of Mr. Lincoln. 

Do you remember the Sumter gun, the first 
cannon fired at the Union by the Confederac}^, 
fired in the harbor of Charleston, S. C, against 
Fort Sumter? 

Probably you did not hear it. Even if you 
did, you were not prepared for it beforehand, 
and did not know what it meant. Its awful 
meaning may now be condensed into a very 
few words. The President and his advisers 
had done all in their power to prevent the 
coming of the Civil "War, but their efforts had 
failed. The war had come in spite of them, 
and its public announcement was to begin at 
Charleston, by the cannon which thundered 
and the shot that struck at half- past four 
o'clock on the morning of April 12, 1861. 

The bombardment of the fort began with 
that firing-, but the news of it did not reach 
Washington until many hours later. The fall 
of the fort was not known there until late on 
Sunday, the fourteenth, but the ink was al- 
ready dry upon the President's proclamation 
calling the Union to arms. This went out to 



46 LINCOLN AT WORK 

the country, by mail and telegraph, on Sun- 
da}", but bore date, of course, as of the fif- 
teenth, Monday. 

During a number of days before that date I 
had not once been at the AVhite House. I had 
official duties elsewhere ; and all my spare 
hours, at least, had been spent in drilling with 
a " crack company," the Kational Rifles, after- 
ward known as Compan}'' A in a battalion of 
United States Volunteers. I had now, how- 
ever, an errand of my own to Mr. Lincoln; 
and I went to perform it very early on the 
morning of April 12. I had a favor to ask, 
and 1 knew that it might be almost impossible 
to get at him after the strong tide of his daily 
office-seekers and other visitors began to rise. 
I reached the AVhite House, and my latch-key 
let me in, so that I could go up-stairs and lie 
in wait to catch him whenever he might come 
over from his breakfast in the residence part 
of the building. 

The great central hall on the second floor 
extends from east to west along the entn-e 
length of the White House. It is cut off at 
each wing by very wide folding doors. I 
posted myself inside of the eastern doors, and 
walked up and down the hall and in and out 
of the library. I Avas standing in the hall, op- 
posite the library door, when the western fold- 



FOB TEA ITS OF LINCOLN 47 

ing doors came suddenly open. They were 
left so, for Mr. Lincoln did not turn to close 
tliem behind him. 

Better than any other man at the North, 
probably, he knew precisely how things were 
going on at Charleston. He also knew what 
the consequences must be, and that he must 
soon put his signature to the war proclamation 
already lying in his writing-desk in his office 
over yonder. 

He came through the doorway very slowly, 
a step at a time, leaning forward, seeming al- 
most to stagger as he came. Slowly, heavily, 
he came onward into the hall, giving very 
much the impression of a man who is walking 
in his sleep in some vague and terrible dream. 
It was- no dream to him, although it may have 
been a prophetic foresight, a statesman's clear 
vision, of the bloody battle-fields and awful 
desolations which were so soon to come. 
Whatever they might be, he must himself ap- 
pear to take the responsibility of them for all 
time. 

His strongly marked, resolute features wore 
a drawn and gloomy look, and there were dark 
patches under his deeply sunken eyes. These, 
too, were not looking at me, nor were they 
seeing anything else in the broad hallway or 
the further passage. They were intensely gaz- 



48 LINCOLN AT WORK 

ing at something far away, — in the future, it 
might be, — and he paused for a moment in the 
attitude of one who is listening. 

The artist and his camera shoukl have been 
ready just then to take a priceless portrait of 
Abraham Lincoln. My own mind and memory 
were taking one indelibly, for I stood stock-still 
a few feet in front of him. As he turned his 
head, I ventured to say, " Good morning, Mr. 
Lincoln." 

No word came back at once, although the 
far-away look in his face was now levelled at 
my own. His expression did not change, and 
I was almost alarmed. What could this 
mean ? 

" Why, Mr. Lincoln ! You don't seem to 
know me ! " 

"O yes, I do," he replied, with a long- 
drawn sigh of utter weariness. " You are Stod- 
dard. What is it?" 

" I wish to ask a favor." 

Now he awoke somewhat, and his lips pursed 
a little impatiently. He was being driven al- 
most to death just then by people who came 
to him to ask favors. 

" Well, well, what is it ? " 

"It's just this, Mr. Lincoln: I believe there 
is going to be fighting pretty soon, right here, 
and I don't feel like sitting at a desk, writing, 



PORTRAITS OF LINCOLN 49 

while any fight is going on. I 've been drilling 
and serving guard duty with a company al- 
ready ; and, if it 's ordered on duty, I want to 
go with it." 

"Well, well," he cut me short, while his 
gloomy face brightened splendidly, " why 
don't you go ? " 

" Why, Mr. Lincoln, only a few days ago I 
took a pretty big oath that puts me under 
your orders ; and now I 'm likely to be asked 
to take another oath to obey somebody else. 
I don't see how I can manage them both with- 
out your permission. I may be ordered to 
service outside of the District of Columbia." 

The President seemed to see something al- 
most comical in my petition, for a half-laugh 
was taking shape on his countenance. 

"Go ahead! Go ahead!" he said to me. 
" Swear in ! Go wherever you are ordered to 
go!" 

" That 's all I want, Mr. Lincoln." 

I remember feeling greatly relieved, for I 
was a young fellow then, and tremendousl}' in 
awe of the President. It was so kindly a 
thing for him to do, you know ; and I was 
turning away, when he called me back in a 
voice that had in it a curious kind of feeling. 

" Young man," he said, " go just where you 
are ordered. Do your duty," and he added 



50 LINCOLN AT WORK 

other words that are not at all likely to be for- 
gotten. 

Very quickly I was out in the open air, 
thinking more about him than about anything 
or anybody else ; but the one thing I did not 
know came to my mind before Sunday, — Mr. 
Lincoln had been listening for the Sumter gun 
that morning. I saw him at about eight 
o'clock, three and a half hours after it was 
fired. Had he actually heard it, do you sup- 
pose, at that distance ? Or was he only so sure 
of its firing that he was going over to his of- 
fice to call out the militia and the volunteers 
and send the ships to sea ? At all events, no 
portrait-painter ever had a better opportunity 
to do something famous than one would have 
who could transfer to canvas the weird, lost, 
all but ghastly, expression, through which, 
nevertheless, a strange fire of courage and 
determination was blazing, as the President 
paused in the dim hallway, gazing southward. 

My company of volunteers, with a first-rate 
West Point captain to handle it, was sworn in 
on Monday morning, early. It was the very 
first company of volunteers sworn in any- 
where ; and I went off to do soldier duty with 
it for three months, taking occasional fur- 
loughs for brief visits to the White House. I 
had obtained, however, on that Sumter-gun 



PORTRAITS OF LINCOLN 51 

morning, the first and only favor, with one ex- 
ception much like it, that I ever asked of 
Abraham Lincoln. 

Do you ask me whether I can think of any 
other portrait which might equal that one ? 

I have thought of two or three which might 
well hang beside it in the great gallery of a 
nation's loving memory, but who shall paint 
them now? It is of no use to talk about them. 
The best we can do is to study the likenesses 
we have, with our eyes shut, striving to look 
through them and beyond them. 








HAT'S this ? Have the office-seek- 
ers been disorderly ? That 's a 
new one, but the other panes in 
that sash look as if they had been 
there since the house was built." 

General Leavenworth and I were standing 
by the window, and the room was almost 
thronged with men of distinction, legislators, 
army men, and others who were waiting there 
their turns to see the President. He and sev- 
eral members of his cabinet were in his own 
reception-room adjoining. 

The window was one which looked south- 
ward, toward the Potomac, and across the 
river the first camps of the Union army were 
forming, and the first forts for the protection 
of the city of Washington were rapidly con- 
structing. The Civil War had but just begun, 
and it was something very terribly new to us 
all. 

The pane of glass to Avhich the general 
called my attention had been put in so recently 
that the putt3'^-marks of the glazier's work had 
not yet been cleaned away. It was therefore 

52 



A FORGOTTEN HERO 53 

a new pane, and was really noticeable among 
the old ones, for almost everything about the 
Executive Mansion in those days carried upon 
its face a worn-out and ancient character. 

" General," I replied, after looking at it for 
a moment, " I think I will tell you the story 
that belongs to the breaking of that pane of 
glass. Did you ever know Colonel Ellsworth, 
of the Ellsworth Zouaves ? " 

" No," said the general, " I never even saw 
him ; but I attended his funeral in this house, 
in the East Room last week. Wonderfully 
solemn affair. The whole nation regrets his 
death. His was to me a very strange fate. So 
splendid a young fellow. So full of promise. 
It was sad to think of his dying as he did, on 
the very threshold of this horrible war. He 
seemed to die so uselessly, too." 

"Yes," I said, "his was the first blood to be 
shed when our army marched into Virginia. 
A good many more must die before long, on 
both sides. I was with my own company that 
night, over yonder. We were the first battal- 
ion to cross the Potomac, by the Long Bridge. 
I served as a scout in the advance." 

" I wish I had been there," he said. " I 
wish I might be in the first battle that is to be 
fought. What has that and what has Ells- 
worth's death to do with the smashing of this 



54 LINCOLN AT WORK 

pane of glass ? "Who broke it, and what did 
he do it for ? " 

" Ellsworth himself broke it," I told him. 
" Just one week ago to-day. He did it with 
that rifle that stands in the corner yonder." 

" How was it ? " exclaimed the general and 
others who had drawn nearer. 

" This is not my room," I said ; " it is Mr. 
Nicolay's and John Hay's. I do not belong 
here. My desk is in the northeast room, 
across the hall. Last Sunday morning I ob- 
tained a few hours of leave of absence from 
Major Smead of our battalion, and I came here 
to get the news and find out how things were 
going on. When I got here, the house was as 
good as empty. The President and Mrs. Lin- 
coln were at church. The two private secre- 
taries, Nicola}^ and Hay, were away some- 
where. Even Willie and little Tad were said 
to be at church. It was a hot day, but the 
house seemed dark and gloomy. It 's a blue 
time, anyway. I waited, for I was anxious to 
see somebody and have something ta tell the 
boys. 

" I came into this room, and I stood about 
where I am standing now, looking at the flags 
over yonder, across the river. I heard a kind 
of hurrah behind me; and, when I swung 
around, there was Ellsworth. He was almost 



A FORGOTTEN HERO 55 

like a member of the President's own family. 
He was in from camp after news, just as I was, 
and to see the White House people. He was 
the noisiest, merriest, liveliest, and one of the 
handsomest young felloAvs I can think of. He 
was full of fun and fire and animation. Be- 
sides his tremendous physical energy, he was 
boiling over with ambition and patriotism, and 
he was a keen thinker. I had an idea that he 
would soon be a general and have command of 
one of the Union armies. I knew that he 
fully expected such a result himself. We went 
on into all sorts of war talk, for it was ex- 
pected that Virginia would secede in three 
days and bring the new Confederacy one State 
nearer AVashington and the Potomac. Close 
upon the heels of that would surely come im- 
portant movements, and we expected to have 
our parts in them. 

" Something or other led Ellsworth to go 
and pick up that rifle. It is one of the new 
patterns. He was a perfect drill-master and 
a kind of machine for accuracy in the Zouave 
manual of arms. It was a genuine pleasure 
for me to put him through the manual, and 
watch the wonderful exactness of his every 
movement. In obedience to my orders he 
stepped around here and there, and I had him 
facing this window, very near it, when I said, 



56 



LINCOLN AT WORK 



'Aim! ' Up came the rifle mechanically, and 
the muzzle went crashing through that pane of 
glass." 




"The .muzzle went crasuixg through that pane." 

" I declare ! " exclaimed General Leaven- 
worth. "I do n't know Avhy I had any curios- 
ity about it. AVhat did you boys have to say 



A FORGOTTEN HERO 57 

about your carrying on, when the President 
found his window broken?" 

" He did n't say anything. We. had no 
chance to explain to him," I replied. " Do you 
remember how it was said they meant to mur- 
der Mr. Lincoln at Baltimore, when he came 
on to be inaugurated ? " 

" It 's my opinion that they came very near 
doing it, too," said the general. " I 've heard 
of other plans and plots. The fact is, I be- 
lieve he is in danger all the while. He will be 
assassinated some day." 

" There are a good many who think so," I 
told him. " We feel more than a little anxiety 
about it. li he were to be murdered just 
now, everything would go all to pieces. It 
would murder the Union itself." 

" Just so ! Just so ! " exclaimed he. " But 
what has that to do with Ellsworth and his 
rifle and the pane of glass ? " 

" Well, nothing in particular," I said ; " but 
he tried to cook up a yarn about some fellow 
hiding in the shrubbery down there. It was a 
lurking assassin who mistook one of us for Mr. 
Lincoln, and blazed away. The bullet missed 
the President, and only smashed the glass." 

" I did n't hear of any such story," he inter- 
rupted doubtfully. " It did n't get out, or it 
would have been in the newspapers." 



58 LINCOLN AT WORK 

" Of course it would," said I ; " but it bad n't 
a cbance to get out. Ellsworth broke down 
the first time he tried to tell it. He could n't 
keep his face straight long enough to humbug 
anybody. There was too much laugh in him. 
He went back to his camp, and I went to mine. 

" It 's only a week ago. I can hardly believe 
that he is gone, shot in that old Alexandria 
tavern for pulling down a Confederate flag. I 
don't like to think of it, that I shall never see his 
pleasant face or hear his ringing laugh again." 

" My dear fellow," responded Leavenworth, 
"so will thousands upon thousands have to 
say before a great while. This is to be a long 
war and bloody. He will be forgotten pretty 
soon, for there will be so many other dead 
heroes." 

So he and I, for we were old friends, talked 
on for a while, and then I got away to my 
soldier comrade, taking with me whatever 
news I had gathered. 

It was long before I was again a regular 
worker at my desk in the AVhite House. I 
forgot all about Ellsworth's pane of glass 
until one day, after Grant became president, 
I saw it there, and the old story came back to 
me. I was thinking of it Avhen a summons 
came from President Grant to meet him in the 
library. Very likely the unmarked pane is in 



A FORGOTTEN HERO 59 

the window yet ; but, if the glass is gone, the 
lesson of it has not departed. 

The mark of Ellsworth's blood upon the 
threshold of the Civil War has with it a kind 
of interrogation point. What is it that is 
worth the blood of men ? What is it that 
may justly call for the sacrifice of life ? 

There are such things. The Union was a 
treasure worth dying for. The breaking up 
of the awful tyranny of Spain in the West 
Indies was of the full value of the precious 
blood that was shed. The history of those 
islands will forever witness that our brave 
boys were not thrown away upon a causeless 
Avar. They did not die in vain. 

Those who were in active life during the 
Civil War saV our volunteers march to the 
front, year after year, " three hundred thou- 
sand more," from call to call, to pay the price 
which was demanded for the nation's life. Our 
Southern brethren passed through a similar 
experience. The dead who bravely, unselfishly 
gave up their lives were very many. Never- 
theless, as General Leavenworth predicted, 
Ellsworth is almost forgotten, and in this he 
becomes also a type and representative of hun- 
dreds of thousands of all the unnamed heroes 
so eloquently described by Mr. Lincoln him- 
self in his Gettysburg speech. 



t1K^fe4lft 





O me there is no other such window 
in America as this ; for at that 
desk right here all the presidents 
of the United States, since the days 
of John Adams, have written or signed their 
great state papers, vetoes, messages to Con- 
gress, and declarations of war or peace. Do 
you notice that, sitting at that desk, you may 
look out toward the South ? The Emancipa- 
tion Proclamation was written there. I re- 
member when the original draft of that his- 
toric document was brought over from this 
desk to my own table that I might make the 
first copies of it. You can imagine how my 
fingers tingled and how the perceptions of 
its tremendous consequences came pouring 
through my brain. Not many days later, 
all the nation was tingling, and Europe also, 
while a new life began for our millions of 
freedmen. 

Down yonder is the Potomac, and the high 
ground beyond is Arlington Heights; and over 
that white residence that crowns them a Con- 

60 



THE DARK WORK-ROOM (Jl 

federate flag was floating in the spring of 
1801 until the very hour when the first Union 
army inarched across Long Bridge, which you 
can see from here. The Marine 13and in their 
scarlet uniforms are playing in the grounds to- 
day, and there are groups of listeners and 
strollers everywhere among the walks and 
shrubbery. It is really bi-illiant out-of-doors 
this pleasant day in summer, but somehow it 
seems dark in this workroom of the presidents. 
Mr. Lincoln has gone over to the war ofllce 
to read the despatches from General Grant at 
Yicksburg and from General Meade away up 
in Maryland. Lee is over the border, and a 
great battle is to be fought within a few days. 
Nobody knows beforehand what will be the 
result of a great battle. The only certain 
thing is that a great many thousands of men 
who are marching vigorously to-day, or talk- 
ing and laughing at their halting-places, will 
be stark and cold in a week. Thousands more 
will be suff'ering and groaning in the hospitals, 
and I sometimes almost believe that the Presi- 
dent hears them and sufl'crs with them. He 
has to make an efl'ort, I know, not to think of 
it, or of the mourning mothers and wives and 
children in so many homes. He will be back 
here pretty soon, but you will have time to 
look around you. 



62 LINCOLN AT WORK 

All the furniture is plain and old-fashioned. 
That long table in the middle is the cabinet 
council-table, and any number of notable men 
have sat around it, discussing the affairs of the 
nation and of the world. The spring-roller 
maps over there in that tall rack are very con- 
venient for the study of all the military dis- 
tricts ; but here on the President's writing- 
desk is one that he makes more use of. To- 
day it is a map, two feet square, of West Vir- 
ginia, upper Maryland, and part of Penn- 
sylvania. The little tacks with different- 
colored sealing-wax heads that are stuck all 
over it are to enable him to mark and follow 
the "positions of the several parts of both 
armies. I do not know why so many pins of 
both colors are stuck so closely in the neigh- 
borhood of the village of Gettysburg. We 
have no forts there, and the place itself is of 
no manner of importance. It has no history. 
The President sits here, now and then, until 
late at night, working with these pins ; and 
sometimes the blue-headed pins have had to 
be moved back unpleasantly or pulled out al- 
together. No American president has had as 
yet much reason for studying maps of the Old 
World. We have no army posts outside of 
the boundaries of the United States ; but we 
may have some day, for our frontiers have 



THE DARK WORK-ROOM 



63 



been pushed forward wonderfull}^ since they 
were first half-surveyed, westward, northwest- 
ward, and southward. 

" Late at night ? " did you ask ? " What are 
Mr. Lincoln's hours of labor ? " All the hours 
between sleep and sleep, I should say ; and the 
bedtime hours are a kind of candle that burns 




The President and the Pins. 

at both ends. Sometimes, when I have had to 
come to my own work unusually early, I have 
looked in here and seen him already busy at 
something or other. More than once, when I 
went away very late at night, the light in his 
room was still burning. He may not have 
been at work exactly, for I remember some 
nights when all he did was to walk up and 



64 LINCOLN AT WORK 

down the room. For all I know, however, he 
may even then have been thinking about some- 
thmg or other, or suffering. 

One reason wh}^ there cannot be any regu- 
larity about the President's working arrange- 
ments is the number and kind of the other 
workshops and workmen. A mile away on 
Capitol Hill is one tremendous concern, and 
the President is a working member of both 
the Senate and the House of Representatives. 
Every great newspaper seems to consider him 
its Washington correspondent and news-pur- 
veyor. 

All around here, close at hand, are the 
others. The treasury does not trouble him 
so very much, for he does not pretend to be 
a financier. The attorney-general's office is 
worse ; the state department, with more busi- 
ness, gives him less anxiety, because of that 
great statesman, William H. Seward. The 
navy office is a part of this, and we owe Mr. 
Lincoln for the Western river, tin-clad gun- 
boats, and for that curious innovation, the 
Monitor. The war office is worst of all, and 
has been from the begin ning-. It seems to 
open right into this room; and all the generals 
do their work under the eye of Mr. Lincoln, 
but not to any extent under his directions. 
He never hampers or meddles with a com- 



THE DARK WORK-ROOM 65 

mander in the field. If, however, he finds 
any general to be too moderately successful 
an experiment, he may put another man in 
his place. 

The sleeping-apartments of the Executive 
Mansion are off there, westerl}", so that the 
President does not actually have to leave shop 
when he goes to bed. All the reception- 
rooms, large and small, are down-stairs. Even 
those occasionally turn into workshops, and 
compel him to spend long, toilsome evenings 
in shaking hands with the United States and 
other countries. Hardly one of these even- 
ings ever passes without some energetic soul's 
finding an opportunity to offer him a criticism 
upon his other performances. Some of them 
are kindly meant and encouraging, too. 

Are there never any breaks ? Does he 
never get a breathing-spell ? Yes, sometimes ; 
but they are very short ones, such as they are. 
I can think of a fair illustration just now. 

My room is over there in the northeast cor- 
ner of the building, across the hall from Mr. 
Nicolay's and Mr. Hay's, the private secre- 
taries' office. They are a terribly hard-worked 
pair of young men, and Mr. Lincoln showed 
his usual good judgment and acumen when he 
picked them out for their exceedingly delicate 
and responsible positions. They grew up under 



66 LINCOLN AT WORK 

his eye in Illinois, and he knew pretty well 
what was in them. 

Come over, and I '11 show you how it was. 
That massive chest of drawers, the office table, 
facing the door is the correspondence-desk, and 
that is my chair, behind. Thomas Jefferson 
was the inventor of that kind of swing-around 
armchair. Between the outer end of the table 
and the fireplace is a very different chair. It 
is oddly designed, sloping backward, with a 
slender mahogany frame and a leather seat 
without any cushions. It is of Mexican make, 
and was presented to President Jackson by 
grateful citizens of our sister republic in recog- 
nition of his friendly course in their behalf. 
It became so great a favorite with the old 
hero that ever afterAvard it has been known 
as " Andrew Jackson's chair." It is worth its 
weight in gold, but it will one day be sent 
away as old junk by the upholsterers who will 
furnish the AVhite House. 

I sat behind my table here one evening, and 
Mr. Nicolay sat in that other chair, a little 
behind me at the left. At the fireplace, with 
one elbow on the mantel, stood John Hay. 
He was always the life of any place he ever 
got into, and he was telling us a story of the 
liveliest kind. That was a thing, too, that he 
could do remarkably well ; and he had a laugh 



THE DARK WORK-ROOM 67 

of his own that was catching. He and I had 
been alone in the room w^hen he began to tell 
that story, and at the first of its humorous 
points we both broke down. That is, ^ve both 
broke out into peals of laughter, which to 
some men might have seemed out of place, 
not in keeping wnth the solemn gloom of the 
White House at night, in Avar time. To tell 
the truth, we had not supposed that there was 
anybody else awake in this part of the build- 
ing. 

Mr. Nicolay was at his desk across the hall, 
however; and he at once put down his pen 
and came over to find out what was going on. 
Of course the story had to begin again, and it 
went on as if there were no ghosts of lost 
battles stalking dismally along the shadow^ed 
corridors of the national headquarters. The 
funny point v.-as reached a second time, and 
again the peals of reckless merriment went 
out to startle the proprieties, if they had been 
there. 

"John, just tell that story over again. I 
want to hear it." 

The hall door had opened silently, and in 
walked President Lincoln, his dark face bright- 
ening with a smile of relief. Down he sat, 
right there, in Andrew Jackson's chair, and 
stretched himself out to hear the story. For 



68 



LINCOLN AT WORK 



once, you see, he had gone all the "vvay out of 
his workshop, leaving even his tools behind 
him ; and none of the other workmen, states- 




"JOHN, JUST TELL THAT STORY OVER AGAIN." 

men or generals, were anywhere near. He was 
hiding away in a sort of place of refuge, ever 
so far away from councils and camps and 
battle-fields. 



THE DARK WORK-ROOM 69 

John. Hay did not stir from his post at the 
mantel, and he began at the beginning, doing 
it better than ever. That same first ludicrous 
climax was reached, and neither of us boys 
laughed more unrestrainedly than did the 
President. His feet came heavily down upon 
the floor, and he lay away back in Andrew 
Jackson's chair. The laughter was checked at 
last, and the narrative had just begun again, 
when the half-closed door from the hall was 
pushed open widely. 

" Your Excellency, it's Mr. Seward. He's 
gone into your room, sir. I think it is Mr. 
Stanton, too, and a gineral with him. May 
be it's Gineral Hallick, that's coming up the 
stairs." There stood old Edward Moran, the 
doorkeeper, rubbing his hands one over the 
other and looking almost comically regretful 
and apologetic. He was the last man to in- 
terrupt fun willingly, but his duty compelled 
him. 

Mr. Lincoln sat still for a moment, all the 
merriment first, and then the light, fading out 
of his face. Then he slowly rose without say- 
ing a word, and walked out across the hall to 
his workroom. It did seem as if he all but 
staggered, as a man might in shouldering some- 
what unexpectedly, suddenly, some oppressive, 
overweighting burden. We three were also 



70 LINCOLN AT WORK 

silent, looking at one another. Who might 
guess what news of good or evil had brought 
to the President's office at that hour the men 
who had been announced by old Edward ? 

The breathing-spell, the res])ite from pain 
and toil, was at all events ended. It was of 
the usual pattern, nevertheless. The story 
was never tlnished, for Mr. JS'icolay went back 
to his own room, and Mr. Hay went with him, 
and I still had work on my table that must be 
completed before sleep. 




^fWRITINa-"-^ 



RESIDENT/* *^ 




^^^^ HAT'S the way, is it, that you deal 
with the President's mail ? This 
is shameful ! Mr. Lincoln ought 
to know this ! A mere boy, too, 
to be given such a responsible position ! " 

He was a very portly old gentleman, fine- 
looking and exceedingly dignified. He was, 
from his appearance, such a man as might be 
governor of a State, for instance, or president 
of a great railway company. He had been sit- 
ting there, in Andrew Jackson's chair, as it 
was called, near my table in the northeast room 
of the White House, during a full half -hour. 
He had been waiting his turn to go in for a 
conference of some sort with the President. 
A number of other visitors had been admitted 
one after another ; but as yet he had not been 
sent for, and even that may have irritated 
him. 

At all events, not having anything else to 
do then and there, he had been keenly watch- 
ing the swift, decisive processes of opening and 
disposing of the Executive Mansion mail. He 
had even seen the post-office messenger deliver 
71 



72 LINCOLN AT WORK 

a full bag of it, large parcels and small, pour- 
ing them out upon the table before me. Then 
he had seen that every envelope came open as 
soon as it was reached, whether addressed to 
Mr. Lincoln himself or to his wife. 

It might possibly be that at some time or 
other he himself had sent important communi- 
cations to be handled in like manner. At all 
events, a great many thousands of his fellow 
citizens must have done so, in utter ignorance 
of this merciless business going on at the cor- 
respondence-table. He could feel for others, 
if not for himself, and his face had grown red 
Avith indignation while Andrew Jackson's 
chair was becoming almost too small to hold 
him. 

On either side of the secretary's chair were 
tall willow-ware wastebaskets, and into one or 
the other of these had gone a very large pro- 
portion of the epistles, envelopes and all, with- 
out note or comment, the instant that their 
character was ascertained. Beyond, near the 
wall, in a large and growing heap, Avere thrown 
upon the floor all manner of newspapers and 
journalistic clippings after very hurried glances 
at any part of their columns marked black, red, 
or blue to demand especial attention. Possibly 
the old gentleman may at some time have writ- 
ten a stunning editorial or printed an import- 



WRITING TO THE FBESIDENT 73 

ant letter. Upon the table itself lay an array 
of large official envelopes with printed ad- 
dresses. Into one or another of these, every 
minute or so, was thrust some document upon 
which the secretary had written a brief in- 
dorsement, indicating some bureau or other 
destination. Some of these envelopes Avere 
already sealed now, ready to send away. 

The watcher had been also watched, for he 
was not by any means the first of a number of 
angry critics to occupy a chair of indignant 
observation in the neighborhood of those waste- 
baskets. A kind of preparation had been made 
for him as the letter-opening went on. A 
number of writings, selected as they came to 
hand, and of even exceptionally strong charac- 
teristics, had been laid aside like so much fixed 
ammunition. 

Down came his Teet, in a moment more, with 
a thumping force, and he stood erect, glaring 
at the secretary. 

"I don't believe Mr. Lincoln can be at all 
aware of this " 

"Sir," I said to him calmly, "will you be 
good enough to examine that lot of letters for 
yourself? I should be glad to have your 
opinion as to whether or not the President of 
the United States can turn aside from his some- 
what important public duties and give his time 



74 



LINCOLN AT WORK 



to that sort of thing, I can assure you that he 
is really quite busy nowadays." 

The dignified old gentleman took the se- 
lected epistles, sat down again, and began to 
read them, while I returned to my work with 
one eye at liberty. If his face had been red 



1 1 rniJ-''"'' 




'I don't believe Mr. Lincoln. can be at all aware 

OF THIS." 



before, it was fiercely blazing now, for he was 
undoubtedly a decent man and a patriot. 

Abuse, scurrilit}^ threats, utter insanities, 
the brutalities, enmities, and infamies of the 
President's letter-bag had been pitilessly given 
him. It was too much for him, altogether. 
He positively could not wade on through the 
whole of that stuff. He threw it contemptu- 
ously upon the floor, exclaiming : " Young 



WRITING TO THE PRESIDENT 75 

man, you are right ! No, sir. What beasts 
men are ! They ought to be shot or hung ! 
The President ought not to be bothered with 
it ! Does this sort of thing go on all the 
time ? " 

It might be really worth while to explain 
the matter somewhat, and I did so. He be- 
came deeply interested, and was entirely rea- 
sonable. He agreed with me that the com- 
mander-in-chief could not be expected to give 
a personal examination to an average mail of 
two hundred and fifty parcels a day, of all 
sorts and sizes, many of them really weighty 
bundles of documents pertaining to varied 
business before the several departments. 

There were other points in my defence. 
The President had absolutely refused to be in- 
formed of letters which threatened personal 
violence. I was never permitted so much as 
to mention one of these, or, in fact, any other 
communication which did not imperatively and 
beyond all question demand his personal in- 
spection. Of course, when in doubt, I might 
consult Mr. Nicolay or Mr. Hay. There had 
been occasions, necessarily, when I went to 
him myself w^ith seemingly unavoidable docu- 
ments, and once I had got myself laughed at 
for the angry interest I had taken. He was, 
however, about the coolest man living, so far 



76 LINCOLN AT WORK 

as any ordinary cause for irritation might be 
concerned, and he cared absolutely nothing at 
all for mere vituperations, even from high 
quarters. 

The dignified old gentleman grew pleasanter, 
even sociable, before he was summoned by a 
messenger to go in and have his own turn with 
the President ; but he had looked in upon a very 
curious department of American literature. 

Perhaps the first impression received by one 
attempting an exhaustive analysis of that heap 
of correspondence, all on one side, might relate 
to the extreme simplicity of the ideas enter- 
tained by vast numbers of men and Avomen as 
to their right to the personal services of a man 
in Mr. Lincoln's place. Here, for instance, 
was a worthy soul out West, who had applied 
for a patent, and would be obliged if the Pres- 
ident would step into the patent office and see 
about it and hurry the matter up. Another 
writer had somehow been beaten in a lawsuit 
before the courts of his locality, and wished to 
obtain advice from Mr. Lincoln as to Avhether 
or not it would be worth while for him to 
bring it before the Supreme Court. 

Not a few of the letters related to asserted 
remarkal)le improvements in guns, cannons, 
and other war materials. Not least notable 
among these, it may be, was a man in Illinois 



WRITING TO THE PRESIDENT ■ 77 

who wrote that he had invented a cross-eyed 
gun. It had two barrels which projected from 
the breech at proper angles, so aiming side- 
wise. He knew, he said, enough cross-ej'^ed 
men to form a regiment to be armed with 
these destructive weapons. He could march 
them up the Potomac, clearing out the Con- 
federates from both banks at once, "for, by 
thunder, Mr. Lincoln, I'm cross-eyed enough 
to be the colonel." 

This queer fellow's proposition was quite as 
valuable as were a great many others that 
were urged upon the government. His tactics, 
too, were as good as were those of a host of 
army-campaign plans that were submitted, A 
principal feature of most of these seemed to 
be the author's idea that the Southern States 
^vere a checker-board, and that across it, to 
and fro, army corps and the like might be 
jumped and landed irrespective of their sizes 
and of such things as intervening mountains 
and rivers, almost regardless, also, of armed 
gatherings of riflemen in uniforms of gray or 
butternut. A like idea lives to-day, evidently, 
in the minds of countless critics of the current 
military operations in the Philippines, 

Here, on this inside corner of my table, lies, 
one day, a letter Avhich I can hardly make up 
my mind to destroy. No, it is not especially 



78 LINCOLN AT WORK 

important; but I really believe Mr. Lincoln 
must see it. It is a pretty long letter, too, 
written clearly in a woman's hand. There are 
careless ink spatters. There are several blis- 
tered places, as if it had been sprinkled with 
hot water. The woman has lost all her sons. 
They all died in battle, and she is left alone. 
She is one of many American mothers, too, 
very many 1 But she writes to Mr. Lincoln 
that she is praying for him day and night, and 
for the Union. Yes, I must, I will take it in 
to him myself by and by. 

Did I do so ? What did he say ? 

"Well, I cannot remember exactly what I 
said when I handed him that letter; but I 
knew, like a flash, that he wanted me to get 
out of his room and back to my own while he 
read it alone by himself. Perhaps he saw 
something wet on my face ; I don't know. 
He never said anything to me about it after- 
ward. It was only a specimen letter, after 
all, for there were a great many good, brave, 
praying women all over the country ; and so 
the Union was preserved, although it cost them 
their sons that died in battle. 

The volunteer statesmen were very numer- 
ous, and their epistles were generally very 
long. The fate of these was generally short, 
owing to the handiness of the willow baskets. 



WRITING TO THE PRESIDENT 79 

About one-half, at least, of the varied ma- 
terials forwarded by mail to the executive 
office was simply misdirected, in the ignorance 
of the senders. It consisted of legitimate busi- 
ness with the government, fairly belonging to 
one or another of the many bureaus of the de- 
partments. All these were easily referred to 
their proper places, and that was the end of 
them. The like was true of all the innumer- 
able applications of the office-seekers. 

Not any too frequently, a formal acknowl- 
edgment of a letter's arrival seemed to be 
called for ; but there was little time for mere 
courtesies in those days, and every such reply 
was a cutting off of the proposed correspond- 
ence. There could be, however, only small 
question of the correctness of one opinion that 
grew upon me. This was, that whenever a 
man went out-and-out crazy, his first delirious 
impulse told him to sit down and write to Mr. 
Lincoln. The name of these lunatics was Le- 
gion. Among them, during many months, was 
a poor fellow who wrote imperative mandates 
concerning all manner of public policy, pro- 
fessing to dip his pen in blood, which looked 
altogether like an inferior article of red ink, 
and signing himself the Angel Gabriel. Yery 
numerous indeed, also, were the communica- 
tions, medium- wise, from the spirit world, the 



80 LINCOLN AT WORK 

contents whereof might go to prove, if genu- 
ine, that there are very badly conducted insane 
asylums in the other world. 

The printed matter for which a careful read- 
ing was requested, perhaps expected, was 
simply enormous, and its perusal would have 
required Mr. Lincoln to be set free from the 
trammels of time. 

Something like this, it may be, goes on at 
the present day, with the supposable difference 
that there is now less excitement, no bitter- 
ness, and that people generally are better in- 
formed. The business relations of the White 
House and the departments must be better 
understood. 

It is to be hoped that there is yet another 
difference. The meanest of all the many brutes 
who attempted to sting Mr. Lincoln wrote to 
him concerning his wife, or else addressed their 
unmanly tirades to her in person. I wished 
then that these wolves could have known, for 
their consolation, how rigid was the rule with 
which she forbade any envelope whatever, save 
letters from her own sister, to reach her hands 
without a first opening and examination by 
myself. None of the poisoned arrows hit her 
after the first few were shot and the rule was 
made. She was a woman of altogether too 
much intelligence and courage to be greatly an- 



WRITING TO THE PRESIDENT 81 

noyed by the purely satanic part of the gen- 
eral enmity, and she deemed it superfluous to 
be informed as to what it might accomplish 
with pen and paper. The paper-cutter on the 
correspondence secretary's desk was, therefore, 
a defensive weapon. 





I WAY back yonder in the dark year 
1861, late one evening I sat by my 
table in the northeast room of the 
White House at Washington. I 
was hard at work with paper-knife and pen, 
opening and disposing of innumerable letters 
that lay in a confused heap at my elbow, for 
it seemed as if all the nation were disposed to 
open personal correspondence with the Presi- 
dent. I was only a kind of human mill to 
which very much such a grist was brought for 
grinding several times every day. A man 
would come through the door before me with 
a leather mail-pouch. He would unlock the 
pouch, pour out its contents on the table, and 
go out again without saying a word. Then 
every envelope had to be opened, and the fate 
of whatever was in each covering was deter- 
mined with lightning rapidity. Much chaff, 
little wheat, and a great deal of out-and-out 
evil came addressed to Mr. Lincoln during all 
the bitter-spirited war years. 

So far as I knew, I was all alone upon that 
floor, for the other secretaries had finished 

82 



THE NIGHT COUNCIL 83 

their work and gone out. No mail-carrier was 
due at that hour ; but the door opened, and a 
man came in. He did not have any locked 
pouch in his hand, but a very large leather 
portfolio, such, for instance, as might be used 
for holding maps and broad documents like 
parchment commissions, civil or military. I 
arose as he entered, for I was conscious of a 
sudden wonder as to what he might be doing 
with that portfolio. 

" Stoddard," he said, " I'm going over to 
Seward's. I want you to take this and come 
along with me." 

Something else was said, no matter what, 
and I left my heap of unfinished mail-matter 
behind me. 

Mr. Lincoln seemed to be in an unusually 
cheerful mood, with occasional lapses into fits 
of absorbing thought. One of these came 
upon him at the head of the stairs, and there 
he lingered for a moment as if he might have 
forgotten something and was trying to remem- 
ber it. His next pause was in the porch out- 
side of the front door, when he discovered that 
it was raining. Back he stepped, and called 
to "old Edward " Moran, the doorkeeper, to 
bring him his umbrella. The doorkeeper 
would find it, he was assured by the comman- 
der-in-chief of the United States armies and 



84 



LINCOLN AT WORK 



navies, " in the corner by my desk, near the 
window." 

Up went Edward ; and in a few moments 
more he was down again, smiling sarcastically 
and rubbing his hands one over the other in a 
manner that was habitual with him whenever 
he had something especial to say. 




"It's not there, Your Excellexcy." 



" It 's not there, your Excellency. I 'm 
thinking the owner may have come for it." 

" Go and get me another, then," commanded 
the President, laughing heartily at the manner 
more than the matter of Edward's drollery. 

The next search for an umbrella was success- 
ful, although there \vas more spread than 



THE NIGHT COUNCIL 85 

splendor in the very antiquated shelter tent 
that was brought by the doorkeeper. Under 
its protection, nevertheless, we walked on out 
of the White House grounds, and as we went 
Mr. Lincoln related merrily sundry other of 
Edward's comicalities. 

" He has been here," he said, " since Taylor's 
time. Ho was a great favorite with President 
Taylor. Did you ever hear his hit upon Fill- 
more's carriage ? " 

I replied that I had never heard it. 

" Well, then. President Fillmore used to tell 
it himself. Shortly after Taylor's death and 
Fillmore's inauguration it was necessary for 
him to procure a carriage. A gentleman that 
was breaking up housekeeping had one to sell, 
and Fillmore went, one day, to take a look at 
it and see if it would do. He took old Edward 
with him. The carriage seemed to suit well 
enough ; but Fillmore turned to Edward, and 
asked him, ' Edward, how will it do for the 
President of the United States to ride in a 
second-hand carriage ? ' Edward rubbed his 
hands hard, and answered him, ' Sure, your 
Excellency, you're only a second-hand presi- 
dent, you know.' " 

Any passer-by at that moment, listening to 
the anecdote and the laugh that followed 
might well have supposed that somebody a 



86 LINCOLN AT WORK 

little belated was going home cheerfully, im- 
oppressed by business cares and certainly not 
aware of being in any shadow of personal 
peril. 

Was there, then, at that time any danger of 
violence to Mr. Lincoln ? 

I do not know. There may not have been 
any, although there Avere bitter enmities 
enough. Hardly a day passed without the ar- 
rival of threatening letters which he refused 
to know anything about. Neither were they 
ever seen by other eyes than mine. Most of 
them, doubtless, may be regarded as only the 
empty expressions of brutal animosities, 
whether their envelopes were addressed to the 
President, or, as some of the worst of them 
were, to his Avife. 

At all events, there were no armed guards 
to be seen around the White House grounds 
that rainy night. Not even a solitary sentinel 
was posted to inquire the purposes of. whoever 
might come or go to or from the headquarters 
of the armies of the republic. 

The house then occupied by the secretary of 
state was on the easterly side of Lafayette 
Square, standing by itself, the second house 
from the corner of Pennsylvania Avenue. It 
was wide-fronted, without any basement story, 
and had a central hall. On the right of this, 



THE NIGHT COUNCIL 87 

at the main entrance, was an ample reception- 
room, into which a servant conducted us that 
evening. A bright fire of logs was blazing in 
the fireplace. In front of this was a business- 
ofiice table covered with green leather, littered 
with books and papers. 

The President took a chair before the fire, 
and at once all the cheerfulness went out of 
him. I found a chair for myself behind the 
table, on which I deposited my portfolio. I 
had already been informed whom we were to 
meet, but not what for. 

A long minute or so went by ; and then the 
hall door opened, and in walked Mr. Seward, 
accompanied by Major-General John A. Dix, 
then recently placed in charge of civil rather 
than military affairs in Maryland and a large 
adjoining territory. He was a short, slight, 
handsome man, of exceedingly polished man- 
ners, and I, as a born New Yorker, had been 
very proud of his noble conduct while a mem- 
ber, as secretary of the treasury, of the last 
cabinet of President Buchanan. The country 
owed him a debt of gratitude on that account 
much more than for all the good service he 
had previously rendered as governor of the 
State of New York, as Senator of the United 
States, or as diplomat representing the nation 
in Europe. 



88 LINCOLN AT WOBK 

As soon as my formal introduction as one 
of the President's private secretaries was over, 
I was quite willing to get back again behind 
the table while these three remarkable men 
sat before the fire and discussed the critical as- 
pect of national affairs. All my remaining 
duties were occasional responses to demands 
for maps and papers to be hunted for in the 
portfolio. Then a sort of deep awe came upon 
me as their conversation passed deliberately, 
slowly, from point to point. Their especial 
subject for consultation was the policy thence- 
forth to be pursued with the border States, 
Maryland, western and eastern Virginia, 
Kentucky, eastern Tennessee, and Missouri. 
It was a subject with which General Dix, for 
some reason, was supposed to be exceptionally 
familiar, and concerning which he had formed 
decided opinions of his own. These views, as 
they were now brought out conversationally, 
were found to be very nearly, but not quite, in 
accord with those of the President and the 
secretary of state. It was a curiously informal 
and yet unspeakably important night council. 
Upon the decisions made then and there 
might depend the immediate future of large 
populations, States, and, in proportional con- 
sequence, the welfare of the whole nation, the 
outcome of the Civil War itself. 



THE NIGHT COUNCIL 



89 



The long conference ended at last. The 
maps and papers were restored to the portfolio. 
The three great men shook hands heartily, 
and Mr. Lincoln set out homeward. It was 
raining only lightly ; but the umbrella was up, 
and the President walked on under it very 
slowly, as if he were thinking. Perhaps it was 




"It was a curiously informal council." 

my State pride which induced me to venture 
the question, " Now, Mr. Lincoln, what do 
you think of General Dix ? " 

He was silent for a moment. 

" What do I think of him ? " he then said. 
" Well ! This is the first time I ever met him ; 
but from what he has said to-night, from the 
advice he has given, I should say that General 
Dix is a wise, a very wise man." 



90 LINCOLN AT WORK 

That was satisfactory, and we walked on to 
the breastwork-like stone parapet of the side- 
walk at the northeasterly corner of the White 
House. Here the President halted and stood 
still, gazing southward. In that rainy, misty 
gloom, it was impossible for him to seethe Po- 
tomac or the fort-crowned heights beyond it. 
There were dimly glimmering points of light 
here and there, but all that he was staring into 
was as a sort of symbol of the great darkness 
which at that date had settled over the country. 
Tears like rain were falling everywhere, and 
the wisest as well as the bravest confessed their 
utter inability to forecast the things that were 
to come. 

Kot a syllable was spoken during that pro- 
longed, absorbed, gloomy look toward the 
South, toward the Confederacy. 

Then, moving wearily, the President turned 
away to the portico, and I shut down the um- 
brella. Old Edward had been watching, for 
the door swung open and a stream of light 
sprang out. There had been a comicality on his 
lips, ready for speech ; but the old doorkeeper 
looked into Mr. Lincoln's face, and all the 
prepared fun died out of his own. Xot toward 
the household side of the mansion, but up the 
other stairs to his business office, the President 
led the way, as if he had yet more work to do 



TEE NIG ST COUNCIL 91 

— if there was ever any hour when he had not. 
The portfolio was left upon the long cabinet- 
council table, and I returned to my northeast 
room ; but I did not feel like opening or read- 
ing any more letters, I knew more than I 
had ever known before concerning the deadly 
dangers besetting the United States, and also 
much more of the deep-thinking wisdom and 
patriotism by which those dangers were to be 
met and overcome. Not by clashing army 
corps upon a battle-field, but by three states- 
men before a fireplace, had the nation been 
well defended and its future salvation in a 
manner assured. 




The ^ide hoard i 

f-'j and the rf^ ( 

niteHousefi 




*N the old, old days before the Civil 
War, and very nearly at the end 
of that era of excitement and ex- 
travagance, there still lingered in 
Washington city society one objectionable 
remnant of ancient notions concerning hospi- 
tality. Perhaps it was a small yet treasured 
fragment of the ancient baronial custom of 
" open house." 

Its most complete representative, and often 
very handsome indeed, was " the sideboard " 
in each dining-room, and next to this was the 
" locker " in parlor or library. 

As for the former, it might be brilliant with 
cut-glass goblets and decanters and with wine- 
glasses of varied tints and patterns. With 
these, whether always visible or only ready to 
be brought out, were brandy, old rum, gin, 
whiskey, port, sherry, Madeira, and cigars. 

According to the tastes, the pocket, or the 
credit of the householder were the "iitter and 
the perfection or profusion of the social stim- 
ulants ready for offering. 
92 



THE SIDEBOARD AND THE WHITE HOUSE 93 

All this was in the houses of men of means, 
but vastly more numerous were the minor im- 
itations. By the sure operation of the laws 
of finance, and also by the requirements of 
local household or office proprieties, the lists 
of refreshments indicated diminished in num- 
ber and in kind until in the lower grades of 
purchasing ability even the brandy disappeared. 
On the most extended line or level all that 
still was free was the plain glass tumbler and 
plain whiskey. 

Thoughtful people, especially "total-absti- 
nence " people, of the present day may not all 
be aware how tremendous is the improvement 
which has been made. Tliey may be able to 
thank God more heartily for the present and 
to gain courage and faith concerning the 
future if now and then the past shall be held 
before their eyes with even offensive plainness. 
If by this means they are enabled to perceive 
more clearly the kind of Egypt from which 
the Lord has led us out, then they may not 
murmur quite so much in the moral wilderness 
which yet remains, for we are a great deal 
nearer Canaan than we were a half-century 
ago. It was, after all, only an all but universal 
evil which found this form for its seductive 
expression among the preservers of old fash- 
ions at Washington. 



94 LINCOLN AT WORK 

In the Capitol building itself were then not 
only the authorized restaurants in each wing, 
Senate and House of Representatives, but also 
the " hole in the wall," with its door so very 
near to that of the Supreme Court rooms, at 
the centre, and the committee rooms with their 
well-supplied lockers. Besides these were the 
numerous clerk-room desk " crypts " for mis- 
cellaneous hospitality, that Avere easier far for 
a visitor to find than was the historic crypt 
under the foundations of the original structure, 
designed by its architect to receive the bones 
of George Washington. 

The " keeper of the crypt " was paid a sin- 
ecure salary during several successive genera- 
tions, and the legislation for the extinction of 
his office was obtained with difficult}^ Much 
more difficult to engineer was the suppression 
of some of the unnecessary barrooms, public 
and private, at the Capitol. 

In that day, if a man who was for any rea- 
son a welcome visitor, especially if he were ac- 
companied by friends, went into parlor or office 
which contained due provision for hospitality, 
he was sure of a pressing, an all but irresist- 
ible, invitation to drink, although that is a 
coarse, unpleasant term with which to describe 
free-hearted friendliness. 

For even a stranger to respond by a point- 



THE SIDEBOARD AND THE WHITE HOUSE 95 

blank refusal "was often to run a serious risk 
of giving personal offence. There is no danger 
at all that any one will or can form an exag- 
gerated idea concerning the universality or 
mischief of this custom. It was ruinous. 

The Executive Mansion, the abode as well 
as the business ofHce of the presidents of the 
United States, from the day when it was first 
occupied, half-finished, by the Adams family, 
had a character of its own, changing only a 
little, from term to term, with the character of 
its illustrious tenant pi'o tern. It was gener- 
ally regarded by the people of Washington 
themselves and by many who came to it from 
far corners of the land as being necessarily a 
house for the offering of generous hospitality 
of this description. The attempts of more 
than one of the presidents to comply with this 
absurd demand upon them resulted in almost 
their financial shipwreck. 

There are many legends of the old-time 
White House entertainments and "receptions.'" 
Some of them we may well wish to believe 
too highly colored and untrustworthy. At 
least, there is no need to print them ; but the 
proceedings at the inauguration of President 
Jackson, for instance, have been published 
with some fulness, and will serve for all useful 
illustration and suggestion. An examination 



96 LINCOLN AT WORK 

of tliat record enables us to mark the advance 
in public opinion by reason of which some 
things which once were customary are now 
impossible. 

The dawn of the better state of things ap- 
peared some years before the Civil "War ; but 
as yet it was only a dawn, and not a bright 
one. There were then already a number of 
official and other notable households wherein 
not anything objectionable was to be en- 
countered. 

The list of these was increasing only too 
slowly, and it would now be invidious to 
specify any of them by name. The house- 
holds and the clean-kept public offices were 
rare exceptions, like oases in a desert, — a 
thirsty desert ; and they were so maintained 
in defiance of a sentiment or opinion the 
power of which can now be but imperfectly 
understood. 

There yet remains, curiously, a class of men, 
distinguished and otherwise, who speak at 
times regretfully, admiringly, of the vanished 
customs, the abolished freedom and good fel- 
lowship. 

There is a very interesting moral and reli- 
gious history to be read and pondered over, if 
Ave turn from the capital to the country at 
large, and try to trace the course of the ac- 



THE SIDEBOARD AND THE WHITE HOUSE 97 

knowledged improvement. One very power- 
ful agency or help in bringing about the revo- 
lution at Washington, however, worked alto- 
gether silently, and it seems to deserve a 
record. A sort of shudder went through the 
hearts of the preservers of the ancient free 
and liberal customs, early in 1861, when the 
incredible assertion was passed from lip to lip 
that there was thenceforth to be no wine or 
anything else of a hospitable nature to be ob- 
tained at the Executive Mansion. The good 
old days were indeed felt to be passing away ; 
and the new, the strange, the unknown, was 
coming in. 

There were, of course, many who refused 
belief, and took it for granted that, if the 
presidential sideboard had vanished from its 
former place of glitter and renown, the locker, 
at least, must still remain, with its treasures 
of secret gratification for the palates of the 
favored and initiated few. By others it was 
tacitly assumed that Mr. Lincoln was really 
receiving too many visitors of all sorts, and 
anything like treating was of necessity tem- 
porarily to be dispensed with. There was a 
great deal of pressure upon him, you know, 
and his friends must bear it in mind. 

Precisely what was the nature of the new 
order of things may be illustrated by an inci- 



98 LINCOLN AT WORK 

dent which was almost amusing. Among Mr. 
Lincoln's warm admirers in the city of New 
York were several gentlemen with social ten- 
dencies. They knew little of his personal 
habits and prejudices ; but they were aware 
that he was from the West, and believed them- 
selves familiar with Western customs. They 
were also traditionally aware of the costly ex- 
actions of White House hospitality, and they 
determined to aid him in bearing that part of 
the tremendous burden put upon him. Their 
intentions, according to such light and knowl- 
edge as they had, were patriotic, and their 
performance was liberality itself. They made 
out a " wine list " which omitted hardly any- 
thing supposedly to be required by the side- 
board or locker of the commander-in-chief, and 
the supply included even his dinner-table. 
Everything sent was choice of its kind, and 
it was expressed, prepaid, with warm decla- 
rations of good will. To their credit be 
it also said that hardly any of the several 
givers of that lot of stimulants for an over- 
worked president deemed it in good taste to 
allow so much as their names to be communi- 
cated with the gift. 

The first that I heard of it was Avlien a sud- 
den, peremptory summons came up to me from 
Mrs. Lincoln to come and see her at once, 




MRS. LINCOLN. 
Froiii an old tlagiierreotjpe. 



THE SIDEBOARD AND THE WHITE HOUSE 99 

I hurried down-stairs to her reception-room, 
the historic Bed Room, somewhat anxious to 
know what might be the matter. There was 
enough, indeed, for serious consultation ; for 
she rapidly unfokled to me the story of the 
New York contribution. 

" Now ! " she exclaimed, in very comical 
perplexity, " what are we to do ? I don't wish 
to offend them, of course. But Mr, Lincoln 
won't have it in the house. He never uses 
any. I never touch it myself. And O, there 
is so much of it ! " 

" Where is it, Mrs. Lincoln ? " 

" Why, it 's all down-stairs, in the basement. 
I have n't told Mr. Lincoln, and I don't wish to 
bother him about it. I wish you would just de- 
cide the matter, and tell me Avhat to do. What 
answer shall I give to these gentlemen ? What 
am I to do with all the liquors and wines ? " 

Her disma}^ had set me laughing, but I 
thought I could see a way out of her very 
serious dilemma. 

" As to them," I said, " madam, all you 
need to do is to send an entirely formal ac- 
knowledgment to whoever has acted as their 
agent. Only a business-like receipt for parcels 
duly delivered. As for the wines and liquors, 
don't let them stay in the house at all. Do 
not worry the President about it, either. Make 
LofC 



100 LINCOLN AT WORK 

a fair division of the whole lot among the 
army hospitals, and sliip 'em rig-ht away. The 
snrgeons and nurses Avill know what to do 
with tliem. Put all the responsibility upon 
the scientific people. If any of the sick 
soldiers need it, there it is." 

" That 's exactly what I will do ! " she ex- 
claimed. " Ever}^ bit of it shall go out, right 
away. Then, if anybody ever says anything 
about it, all I need to do is to tell what we did 
with it." 

It may be that the kindly New Yorkers 
themselves would not have felt any sense of 
personal disappointment if they had known 
the actual destination and service of their 
carefully selected assortment, but I do not 
know that they were ever made aware of it. 

All this was very nearly at the beginning 
of the Lincoln administration, and the kind 
of moral testimony which it represents went 
on in silent power year after year. Men did 
not feel like drinking before going to call 
upon Mr. Lincoln. Officials of all sorts felt 
the unseen pressure, and it was all the while 
aided, added to, by the precept and exam- 
ple of several prominent statesmen. Not 
one of them preached on temperance. Mr. 
Lincoln did not, but the tone of official con- 
duct and life underwent a gradual change. 



THE SIDEBOARD AND THE WHITE HOUSE 101 

Nothing like perfection has yet been at- 
tained in Washington, or anywhere else; but 
most of the " barroom " sideboards compara- 
tively have departed, or at least have disap- 
peared. With them has gone away a vAst 
amount of the most pernicious, poisonous 
temptation. 

At all events, the result, such as it is, is a 
forcible lecture in itself upon the power of ex- 
ample and the responsibilities of those who 
are in high places. 




Jhe Sentry AT THE Gate. 



|§ite-.-;^> V -^ 



'L- 




HERE was once a great fire in the 
outskirts of the city of Washing- 
ton. No buildings of importance 
perished, but a number of tempor- 
ar}^ Avooden structures provided by the quar- 
termaster's de])artment for the storage of sup- 
plies for the army. With these and with their 
very valuable contents of hay, straw, grain, 
and provisions, many horses also were burned. 
For obvious reasons, the loss was somewhat 
notable, and the fire was said to have been 
lighted by a spark from a cigar. 

This being taken for granted, an order went 
out instantly from the headquarters of the 
military officer in command of the city, con- 
sidered only as a fortified post of the Army of 
the Potomac, rigidly prohibiting all smoking 
within a specified distance of any of the' nu- 
merous " public buildings." 

The energetic army man had in his mind, 
no doubt, the sundry structures of a military 
character and use, but the consequences con- 
tained something like a lesson or lecture upon 

102 



THE SENTRY AT THE GATE - 103 

" militarism." Tliis is a thing with which the 
American people had never had anything to 
do, prior to the Civil War. It then grew 
rapidly to very large, mushroom proportions, 
and it was not entirely rooted out until several 
presidential elections had labored with it. 

The Capitol and many other of the public 
buildings at Washington are very nearly fire- 
proof. They are, at least, in no danger what- 
ever from small cigar-sparks. A few of the 
older affairs were then of a more combustible 
character, but had escaped from innumerable 
smokers and were in no immediate danger 
whatever. 

The Executive Mansion, not at all fire-proof, 
is one of the public buildings, and it was mani- 
festly covered by the order, literally construed. 
Something like obedience was to have been 
expected from President Lincoln himself, as he 
never smoked. He was not the kind of man, 
moreover, to set his own house on fire ; but I 
have seen the sparks fly out in all directions 
from the blazing logs in the old-fashioned fire- 
places of the White House. 

As to the personal habits of other presidents, 
there was a legend that Andrew Jackson used 
to sit and smoke in his Mexican chair in front 
of the fireplace in his office-room, until two of 
the bricks of its arch were deeply footmarked. 



104 LINCOLN AT WORK 

At about the time when Mr. Lincoln entered 
the ofRce, that arch was reconstructed, and 
Mr, Lincoln expressed much regret that those 
particular bricks had not been preserved. 
There was a subtle, well-understood meaning 
in his Avish to put his own feet in the tracks 
left b}'^ the old hero Avho had dealt so firmly 
with the first beginnings of " nullification and 
secession." 

There was now no real danger of any other 
kind of fire at the Executive Mansion. 

A very zealous military man was in com- 
mand of the regiment of volunteers, infantry, 
from which details were made for the new 
" guard " provided for the personal safety of 
the President. Some of the companies of this 
regiment were composed, for the greater part, 
of patriotic German-Americans, with Euro- 
pean ideas concerning strict discipline and 
army orders. 

Besides the guards on foot, a cavalry regi- 
ment familiarly known as Scott's Kine Hun- 
dred had been ordered to furnish details for 
mounted patrols and videttes to complete the 
security of the national headquarters. 

Xot very late, one dark autumnal evening, 
I was strolling along Pennsylvania Avenue, 
past the corner of the Treasury Building. I 
Avas smoking a cigar, and was in no hurry, al- 



TEE SENTRY AT THE GATE 105 

though there was a large pile of epistolary- 
work upon my table in the northeast room. 
As I drew near to the open gate of the road- 
way that leads from the Avenue to the house, 
I paused for a moment to consider the changed 
order of things. It was as the change from 
peace to war, from the civil authority to army 
rule. 

Just inside of the gateway, in the carriage 
road, sat a cavalryman, motionless, but ready 
at any moment for the use of sabre or carbine. 
I can remember now that his horse stood as 
still as if he had been cast in bronze. He 
looked much more like a horse, however, than 
do some of the bronze castings. 

A few paces from him, on the paved foot- 
path at his right, near the small gate for 
pedestrians, stood a tall volunteer whose rifle 
carried a peculiarly effective-looking sabre 
bayonet. I had carried one of those things 
myself when in service, and knew how useful 
they were to break up hardtack, split kin- 
dlings, or poke a dull fire. There is no record, 
I believe, of their employment for butchering 
human beings. At every other gateway or 
outside sallyport of any kind around the mod- 
est palace of the dictator of America, and en- 
tirely without his direction, just such military 
protection had been given him. Owing, how- 



106 LINCOLN AT WORK 

ever, to the nature of the fences and the ex- 
tent of the ground, Scott's Nine Hundred and 
the infantry might as well have been south of 
the Potomac so far as any real danger to the 
President might be concerned. 

Swinging along somewhat wearily, listlessly, 
I had turned through the smaller gate, puffing 
at my weed, when I was suddenly brought up 
by a flash of glittering steel apparently many 
inches in width, carrying both point and edge, 
such as they were. 

" Put out dot cigar-r-r ! " 

"What?" I responded, more than a little 
astonished at this military invasion of my ac- 
customed privileges in the neighborhood of my 
own official workshop. But again the bayonet 
flashed, and there Avere words unmistakably 
German, followed by a sternly uttered repeti- 
tion of the command. 

" Put out dot cigar-r-r ! " 

I offered explanations, but they were given 
all in vain, for the Teutonic sentinel was furi- 
ously firm. 

I was compelled, then, to recall to mind the 
letter, if not the spirit, of the order for the 
salvation of the public buildings ; and I pitched 
away all that was left of the Cuban peril I 
was bringing upon them. 

My walk began again, but I was already 



TEE SENTRY AT THE GATE 



107 



aware that the cavalryman's rigidity had de- 
parted from him. He had been swaying side- 
wise in his saddle as if his half-suppressed 




"Put out dot cigar-e-e!" 



lauo^hter mi^ht dismount him, and I had be- 
lieved that he was laughing at me. Now, also, 



108 LINCOLN AT WORK 

his bronze horse curveted and wheeled, and in 
a moment more he was pulling up beside me. 

" Mr. Secretary ! Wait a moment ! The 
best joke you ever heard ! " 

I halted readily and faced him ; for he had 
not drawn his sabre, and his pistols remained 
in their holsters. 

" AVhat 's the matter ? I supposed I had a 
right to do as I pleased around here." 

His horse plunged a little, as if he had some 
fun in him, but the rider succeeded in keeping 
near enough to tell me. " It was n't an hour 
ago that Germany halted Stanton himself right 
there, just as he did you." 

"What? The secretary of war? Did he 
make him throw away his cigar ? " 

"Well, he did! Stanton all but ran against 
him in the dark, and Germany shouted at him, 
' You puts out dot cigar ! ' till he gave it up. 
But that wasn't all. Stanton laughed, but he 
had n't more 'n got out of sight before old 
Seward, he came along ; and he 's almost al- 
ways smoking." 

"Did he halt Seward?" 

" You bet ! He pointed his frog-sticker at 
hiin, and yelled, ' You put out dot cigar!' 

" ' O, I guess not,' said Seward, and he was 
going right along ; but he had to halt and 
stand still, and no kind of explanation was 



TEE SENTRY AT THE GATE 109 

worth a cent. Out it had to go before he could 
pass the gate." 

" Stanton and Seward both ! " I exclaimed, 
and the bronze horse gave another curvet, as 
if he perfectly understood the portfolios of 
state and war, but the cavalryman again sup- 
pressed his chuckling and his spirited beast, 
and went on, 

" That is n't all, though, Seward got away 
without being prodded, but a few minutes 
later along came old Ben Butler, as large as 
life ; and he was swinging right in, but he 
was n't in his major-general's uniform. Looked 
like a civilian, you know, ' Halt ! You puts 
out dot cigar ! ' shouts Germany, and Ben 
halted. 

" ' Are those your orders ? ' he asked. 

" ' Dose is my orters ! Put out dot cigar ! ' 
The frog-sticker was pointing straight at him, 
and old Ben threw his cigar away over the 
fence. 

" ' Orders are orders, and they must be 
obeyed. There it goes,' he said, and on he 
went. You ought to have been here as I was, 
and seen and heard it." 

He had more to say, to bring out all the 
peculiar personalities and behavior of the three 
distinguished victims of military authority un- 
necessarily enforced, and then he wheeled 



110 LINCOLN AT WORK 

away to his post of duty, while the volunteer 
and his sabre bayonet bravely held the narrow 
gate against all comers. 

The joke was altogether too good to keep, 
but it was hardly the correct thing to intrude 
upon the President's privacy at that hour. It 
was lucky that the door between his room and 
Mr. Nicolay's was open so that I could see 
him, all alone, writing something at his desk. 
Something important, perhaps, for he lifted his 
head from it Avith a clouded face when I spoke 
to him. I had a curious idea, however, that I 
was doing him good while I told my story, 
and at the end of it he was laughing merrily. 

" Seward ! " he said. " And Stanton ! And 
old Ben ! Well, well ! I guess I'd better send 
for the officer on duty, whoever he is, and tell 
him to let up a little. The orders against 
smoking don't include this part of the camp." 

The captain of the company on guard Avas 
sent for, and he came. He was a good-looking 
young fellow, and I had a perception that 
only his deep respect for the President kept 
down, or back, the broad grin that began upon 
his face. He received the direct orders given 
him by the commander-in-chief, and bowed 
his way out. Perhaps he was not at all sorry 
to have such an incident to tell of in his after 
days. 



THE SENTRY AT THE GATE 111 

My own work called me to my loaded 
table, and there was the end of the matter, ex- 
cept that only a few days later all the formal 
and useless guard-mounting and patrol duty 
was dispensed with. It was not at all to the 
taste of Mr. Lincoln. He objected strenuously 
to military surroundings and to " fuss and 
feathers " of every description. Formalism 
burdened him. 

Long years afterward, I was again in 
Washington, and was, one summer evening, 
the guest of a pleasant private family. Its 
older and younger members were recalling in- 
cidents of the war, and for my contribution 
I told the story of the German sentry at the 
White House gate. Somewhat quiet until 
then, and sitting in a corner, had been a 
bearded young fellow, who listened and 
laughed until the end ; and then he said, " I 
guess you don't remember me." He had been 
introduced to me as a nephew of the lady of 
the house ; but I could say, " No, I don't think 
we have ever met before." 

" Yes, we have ! " he replied, with another 
outburst of fun. " I was the cavalryman ! 
We 've all heard that story before. I just 
wanted to know, though, what Lincoln said 
about it." 

He had other points to add, and perhaps 



112 LINCOLN AT WORK 

there is not now any very great value attach- 
ing to it, but we do owe to President Lincoln 
something for his persistent preservation of 
the supremacy of the civil authority over any 
and every development of militarism. There 
may yet come another national occasion when 
his example may proiitably be referred to. 





The Messenger 

to the 

President 



jNE of the many curious demands 
made upon Mr. Lincoln by his 
critics during the war was om- 
niscience. It was his duty to see 
and hear everything, no matter how far away, 
and then to act upon his perfect information 
in accordance with the course of future events. 
Something- like the same idea has crept into 
the work of later commentators upon his ad- 
ministration. 

He was a broad-minded and subtle analyst 
and judge of whatever information came to 
him, and that he was so rarely misled affords 
us a striking, and all but marvellous, presen- 
tation of his peculiar genius. The central fact 
remains, however, that the great mass of his 
information, of whatever kind, reached him 
through official channels. Every despatch 
from the armies or the fleets, all correspond- 
ence upon either civil or military affairs, was 
sure to be tinged, more or less, by the feelings, 
opinions, or interests of individuals. Each 
person communicating with him might be 
honest, honorable, even capable ; but each was 

113 



114 LINCOLN AT WOBK 

an. individual man, not all-wise nor all- 
knowing. 

Constitutionally as well as officially Mr. 
Lincoln was keenly eager to obtain the exact 
truth in any case, and it sometimes came to 
him through by and forbidden paths. One of 
these paths began at a roadside in the rear of 
the Army of the Potomac, nearly at the close 
of the hard fighting in what is best known as 
the second battle of Bull Run. It will serve 
sufficiently well as an illustration. 

A loud voice called out, in a tone that 
indicated surprise, " What ! are you here, 
Harry ? " 

" Yes, general," came back from the road- 
side. " I 'm helping take care of the wounded. 
Secretary Chase sent me over with a lot of us 
treasury clerks as soon as he heard that the 
battle was going on." 

" My boy," sharply exclaimed the general, 
"you are just the man I want! Your brother 
is one of Lincoln's private secretaries. He can 
get in a message to the President that no army 
officer could carry. It would n't go straight 
in at once if he did carry it. You come along 
with me." 

A few yards away from the spot where he 
had reined in his horse, a brace of army sur- 
geons were busily at work among a ghastly 



THE MESSENGER TO THE PRESIDENT 115 

gathering of shot-shattered soldiers, brought 
in from the last battle-field. The general was 
a fine-looking man, but his face wore now an 
almost broken-hearted expression, mingled 
with something that told of anger as well as 
disappointment. He might well be feeling 
deeply, for he was aware of the net results of 
that day's collision with the Confederate forces 
under General Lee. Hardly as much was yet 
known by the Union army itself, except its 
more badly beaten corps. In the far distance 
at this hour cannon were still sounding. Re- 
serves and re-enforcements were still moving 
toward the front, while all that "front" was 
rushing back discomfited, disordered, nearly 
ruined. 

The Union forces had everywhere fought 
well, heroically. If any blame for the disaster 
belonged anywhere, it did not belong to the 
soldiers. No man could yet say, decisively, 
upon whose shoulders it should be laid. To 
tiiis day the controversy concerning this 
point may, fairly be regarded as unsettled, 
long and thorough as has been the examina- 
tion. 

The corps-commander, for such was the 
general's rank, rode slowly along with Harry 
trudging at the side of his horse. 

" You are something of a dandy, Harry," 



llfi LINCOLN AT WORK 

he remarked ; " but you don't look much like 
one just now." 

" It 's been awful ! " was all that his young 
friend could reply ; for he had been at his ter- 
rible work through many hours, and his hands 
and clothes, and even his face, bore red tokens 
of its character. After that they went on for 
a little distance in silence, and then the gen- 
eral halted, pointing forward. 

" There 's the tent," he said. " It will not be 
a council of war. Nothing of the kind has 
been formally summoned. No report of this 
meeting will ever be made officially, but I 
have sent for the men I want the President to 
hear from. Some know it, and some do not. 
You will come in and sit down by me. Take 
no written notes. That would n't do. Take 
every man's name. Hear every word that is 
said, questions and answers. Then go and tell 
Abraham Lincoln precisely what you have 
heard, no more, no less. I want him to know 
the exact truth and the exact feeling of the 
best officers in this army." 

He gave his own views very fully and freely 
to begin with. It appeared, also, that Harry, 
who held a high position under the secretary 
of the treasury, had won an exceptional rep- 
utation for the accuracy and retentiveness of 
his memory. 



TEE MESSENGER TO THE PRESIDENT 117 

These were the very dark days of the Civil 
War, after the failure of the Peninsular cam- 
paign. This particular day seemed to grow 
darker every minute after the great marquee 
tent of the commanding general was reached. 
There appeared to be great excitement all 
around, and many were coming and going. 
Officers and orderlies carrying despatches rode 
to and fro at full gallop. In the tent itself no 
one was likely to note or care for the presence 
of one youth more, seeming to be there in at- 
tendance upon a corps-commander. Several 
of these and of other officers of high rank 
arrived, and one of them in particular expressed 
himself forcibly concerning the military situa- 
tion before he dismounted from his horse. 

It could not be called a council of war. It 
was not even a debating society. It was an 
altogether informal coming together of a num- 
ber of angry critics, leaders of a defeated 
army, it might be, but as resolute and as ca- 
pable as ever. In such a gathering they could 
and did say many things which would not 
have been inserted, even by themselves, in any 
despatch to the war department. Perhaps 
one or two of them spoke none the less freely 
because of an intimation that they were trans- 
mitting their best opinions to the commander- 
in-chief, the President. 



118 LINCOLN AT WORK 

Harry sat and listened, his pale face glow- 
ing with excitement or growing paler with 
grief as he learned the sad extent of the disas- 
ters, the details of which were unfolded. 

" Get out, now," said his friend, at last. 
" Can you remember ? " 

" I can repeat every word," said Harry de- 
cidedly. " I shall not miss any part of it. 
But how on earth am I to get to Washington ? 
There is n't a horse to be had." 

" I '11 attend to that," replied the genera], 
glancing up the road. " There 's one yonder. 
Horse enough to carry bad news." 

An army wagon had broken down at the 
roadside, its damaged front wheel stuck in a 
ditch, and its driver had unhitched his three 
spans of mules. 

The general ordered him to put a bridle 
upon one of these, but there was no saddle to 
be had. A blanket Avas strapped on instead, 
and the important messenger's steed was ready. 

"Take that order to the quartermaster at 
Alexandria," said the general. " He will send 
you to Washington on a special boat. The 
President will have plenty of despatches be- 
fore you get there, but none like yours for a 
day or two. They are breaking the news of 
this thing a little too gently." 

Away went Harry, and his mule was really 



THE MESSENGER TO THE PRESIDENT 119 

a good one, glad, perhaps, to have a free run 
with no army Avagon behind him. 

Dark, dark, dark was that ride of the young 
messenger, and his heart was the heaviest 
thing carried by his willing mule. He had 
sights to see as he went. "Wounded men on 
stretchers, ambulances, guns, disordered de- 
tachments, confusion, the wrecks of any great 
battle, whether lost or won. 

The dead on each side were thousands, the 
wounded were thousands more, and the Con- 
federate forces themselves had been badly 
shattered. How he found the needful author- 
ity in Alexandria, Harry afterwards hardly 
knew, for he hunted him up in a kind of ap- 
parent chaos that was really nothing more 
than the customary rush and whirl of vast 
military movements. 

At last, nevertheless, a steam-tug was bear- 
ing him swiftly up the Potomac toward Wash- 
ington, and she seemed to him to have no 
other passenger than the courier of the last 
battle. 

The next morning the usual routine of work 
was but just beginning in the Executive Man- 
sion. Miscellaneous visitors were not yet ad- 
mitted, but the President was in his room, 
and he was alone. The secretary in charge of 
the "White House correspondence was sitting 



120 LINCOLN AT WORK 

behind his table in the northeast room, busily 
opening and reading numberless letters, when 
the door in front of him swung open, and 
an extraordinary, uncomely, disorderly shape 
strode hastily to his very elbow. Mud, blood, 
torn clothes, pallor, a battered hat, — some 
vagabond who had broken in past the door- 
keeper. 

" Bill ! I must see the President right away ! 
I 'm from the battle ! " 

" Harry ? Is this you ? I did n't know ^''ou I 
What is it ? " 

" I must n't tell you, nor an3"body but Mr. 
Lincoln. It 's jjrivate news for him " 

" Stand still a moment." 

Up sprung the secretary, and hastened across 
the hall into the President's room. Bending 
gloomily over a pile of despatches, Mr. Lincoln 
at first hardly turned his head when spoken 
to ; but he listened, bending even lower for a 
moment, as if some burden had suddenly grown 
heavier. 

" Bring your brother right in ! " 

Not another Avord spoken, only a knitting 
of the dark brows and a deepening of the deep 
wrinkles. 

A minute more, and Harry was alone with 
the commander-in-chief, the man who always 
found it so very difficult to obtain exact infor- 



THE MESSENGER TO THE PRESIDENT 121 

mation that he felt at times as if he was walk- 
ing on in the dark. 

Half an hour or more went by, — it seemed 
much longer, — and the bell over the secretary's 
table summoned him to Mr, Lincoln's room. 

" Take your brother to Stanton. Take this 
card, and he will see you at once. He must 
know this instantly. It is of vast importance." 

" Come on, Bill," whispered Hany. " I 'm 
almost dead, but I can stand it through." 

As they walked along together, out of the 
White House and toward the War Depart- 
ment, the messenger gave his brother a suffi- 
ciently full account of himself, and of his do- 
ings, but not of the utterances of the several 
division commanders who had composed the 
corps and informal council or army conference. 

Stanton's office was reached, and the gruff 
secretary of war put aside a number of bril- 
liant uniforms to take the grimy courier into 
his private room, where none but he could 
hear. An hour went by, and out he came 
with Harry. "Stoddard," he said, "not a 
word to anybody ; but your brother must see 
Halleck. It lets new light into the whole 
affair. He has done it well." 

A clerk led the way, and General Halleck in 
turn put aside all other affairs to listen and 
question carefully. He was at that time the 



122 LINCOLN AT WORK 

trusted and almost supreme military adviser 
of the administration ; and he, too, may at 
times have been puzzled by conflicting reports 
from here and there. He was a calm, schol- 
arly-looking man, of exceedingly firm nerves, 
a scientific general rather than a leader in the 
field. All the more, for that reason, was he 
well fitted for the vastly important post to 
which he had been appointed. His inquiries 
in the present case were thorough, and con- 
sumed much time ; but before they were ended 
Lincoln, was with Stanton, and Halleck was 
sent for. 

" What 's next, Harry ? " asked his brother. 

" Next ? "Why, I must get a bath and some- 
thing to eat. Then I must go to bed. I 
must n't say a word to a living soul about this 
matter, though. You mustn't, either," said 
the messenger. 

" I ? " almost laughed the secretary. " Humph ! 
My special business, year in and year out, is 
keeping my mouth shut and forgetting things. 
About a good many matters I must forget as 
long as I live. There is going to be a sharp 
inquiry over this defeat, though. It should 
have been a victory. Our men fought splen- 
didly." 

" So they did," groaned Harry. " I never 
want to see a battle-field again, Bill. I wish 



THE MESSENGER TO THE PRESIDENT 123 

I could forget. There 's nothing else so awful. 
The wounded are worse to see than the dead. 
I wish the war were over." 

He slowly walked away, faint and sick. 
The secretary hurried back to his post of duty. 
Lincoln returned to his White House room. 
There were torrents of despatches and reports 
after that, but the best generals in the Army 
of the Potomac had already sent their un- 
pruned opinions to the President. They had, 
for the greater part, unwittingly sent them by 
an army mule, carrying Secretary Chase's con- 
fidential clerk. It has been said, " A bird of 
the air shall carry the voice " ; and so he 
might, if he were sitting in the tent corner 
while the matter was undergoing altogether 
free discussion, and if then he could find any 
means of carrying it to Mr. Lincoln himself. 



>j.,lM .. ir.j, ji^i J r'ft 11- ,1.1 J_i£j . I. . — - n . V. . ■ -r. 




HERE have been crises in our na- 
tional history Avhen it has seemed 
that too great a concentration of 
power in the hands of a popular 
army leader threatened to render the civil au- 
thority subordinate. From each of these 
perils as it came we have been delivered by 
the stubborn jealousy of our successive Con- 
gresses and also by the wisdom and unselfish 
patriotism of individual statesmen. To George 
Washington himself we owe our first and 
greatest debt, and the record of what lie did 
and how he did it is an interesting study. At 
the close of the Civil War there were months 
of disorder and confusion during which it was 
well for the integrity of our institutions that 
the power concentrated was in the hands of 
Ulysses S. Grant. A weaker or a more am- 
bitious man might then have done irreparable 
mischief. Minor instances occurring between 
these indicated dates could hardl}^ be presented 
without too extended an historical explana- 
tion. 

124 



THE WRESTLING-MATCH 125 

The American people, like all others, has ex- 
hibited a sti^ong tendency to glorify military 
success, and has now and then manufactured 
its heroes of the moment out of somewhat de- 
fective materials. There have been American 
demigods that melted away like so many snow 
images as soon as they were placed out under 
the clear sunshine. 

Probably there will always be occasional 
clashings between the habitual dictatorship of 
military authority and the slower, law-bound 
methods of the civil power. The latter may 
even operate detrimentally under certain cir- 
cumstances, but we have wisely decided that 
we will endure any such detriment rather than 
run the risks involved in a consent to avoid it 
by giving even temporary or incidental su- 
premacy to any army leader. 

We formulate our expression of this decision 
by making the President of the United States 
the commander-in-chief of the army and navy, 
although he may not know enough of war to 
drill a corporal's guard or of seamanship to 
row a boat. He is, of course, supposed to 
have his professional advisers, but these are 
not to be his directors. Each of our chief 
magistrates in turn has distinguished himself 
by the wisdom and moderation with which he 
has exercised this tremendous prerogative. In 



126 LINCOLN AT WORK 

it, however, hardly hidden at all is the unques- 
tionably dictatorial authority which was so 
freely exercised by Abraham Lincoln. 

Of him it is also recorded, on the declara- 
tions of General Grant and others, that he did 
not meddle with actual operations of armies 
and commanders in the field. Each general 
intrusted with the direction of a campaign 
was sustained to the uttermost by the Presi- 
dent, and was left altogether unhampered by 
the civil authority to Avhich he was neverthe- 
less held responsible for his successes or his 
defeats. The few collisions which at any 
time occurred were brought about by some 
semblances of political action outside of affairs 
properly military, on the part of officers hold- 
ing important commands. 

The first notable clashing of this kind was 
between the President and General Fremont, 
when that overhasty patriot assumed to ex- 
ercise in the West functions which did not law- 
fully belong to him. 

Another, apparently more dangerous, 
marked the military and civil career of Gen. 
George B. McClellan. There could be no 
question of either the ability or the patriot- 
ism of that magnificently equipped military 
scholar. President Lincoln himself once said 
to me concerning him, in reply to a question 



THE WRESTLING-MATCH 127 

of my own : " Well, Stoddard, I will say it ; 
for organizing an army, for preparing an army 
for the field, for fighting a defensive campaign, 
I will back General Mcd'ellan against any 
general of modern times. I don't know but 
of ancient times, either. But I begin to be- 
lieve that he will never get ready to go for- 
ward." 

That Avas said while the Army of the Po- 
tomac was wasting away uselessly in its camps 
and forts among the Virginia hills south of 
Washington, and while its commanding gen- 
eral was developing his views upon the polit- 
ical aspects of the war. 

After that came the long agony of the pain- 
fully protracted and disastrous " Peninsular 
campaign," from which the army at last re- 
turned to very much its old places south of 
the Potomac and the capital. With it came its 
exceedingly popular general, and there was an 
unconcealed antagonism between him and Mr. 
Lincoln, not only upon questions which were 
political rather than military, but also upon 
others, the solution whereof actually did in- 
clude the constitutional provision and the su- 
preme direction of all the forces of the nation. 

The general once more had a temporary 
residence in Washington, not many minutes' 
walk from the Executive Mansion. Here, in 



128 LINCOLN AT WORK 

my northeast room, I was sitting one evening, 
deeply absorbed in my work. So interested 
had I become in an epistle of unusual import- 
ance that I was entirely unaware of anybody 
else coming in or going out, until alow, weary- 
sounding voice at my elbow said to me : " Leav^e 
that, and come with me. I am going over to 
McClellan's house." Not another word was 
uttered. I arose in silence, picked up my hat, 
and walked out of the house with him. There 
was that in his manner which forbade ques- 
tion or remark. I was aware of having some 
such feeling as a man may have when he is 
looking at a very black thundercloud with an 
idea that a stormy gust is in it. Thunder and 
lightning sometimes come out of such clouds, 
you know, and the tallest trees go down sud- 
denly. Even army tents, big ones, might be 
blown away b}^ one of those thunder-gusts. 

European etiquette, a very important bit of 
governmental machinery, after its kind, might 
have forbidden the commander-in-chief to run 
over in this manner to ask questions of a sub- 
ordinate. It was, to a European diplomatic 
mind, something like an open confession of 
weakness. The inferior should have been sent 
for, not visited. Mr. Lincoln knew hardly 
anything about etiquette or diplomacy. He 
had had some experience with an axe, however, 



THE WEESTLIiYG-MATCH 129 

and he could drive in the edge of one to the 
very eye. 

Kot one word did he speak to me, that I 
can remember, as we walked along. He was 
accompanied, as may be seen, by his brilliant 
official staff, as became a commander-in-chief 
on his way to order the movements of armies 
and to determine the political future of the 
republic. 

The house was reached ; the door-bell was 
rung ; and we were admitted. We were ush- 
ered into an ample and elegantly furnished 
drawing-room. Mr. Lincoln drew a chair to a 
place near the centre-table, and sat down with 
his face toward the doorway from the hall. I 
found a seat somewhat more in the background, 
or on the other side of the table. I was like 
a spectator in a theatre, waiting for the cur- 
tain to rise ; but I was wrong about that, for 
the first act had begun. 

Time enough was to be given for the Presi- 
dent to collect his thoughts and mature his 
purposes after his arrival was announced to 
the commander of the Army of the Potomac. 
Yery possibly that brilliant and accomplished 
leader had just then in hand important army 
matters. If so, due attention must indeed be 
accorded to them, and a mere civilian might 
well wait. 



130 LINCOLN AT WORK 

Minutes went by, and I was conscious that 
the hot blood of angiy indignation was tin- 
gling all over me. My cheeks seemed on fire, 
and my lips were trembling ; but Mr, Lincoln 
sat with a smile growing grimly on his face, 
and the thundercloud had entirely disap- 
peared. 

There came a sound of feet on the stairs in 
the hallway and a rattle of clattering metal 
as if somebody's blade were loose in its scab- 
bard and banged against a baluster. Then 
followed a rushing entrance of elegant men in 
fine uniforms, epauleted, startling ; and I took 
note that the President had on a seedy black 
cutaway coat. No epaulets. No sword. No 
grandeur. Nevertheless, he seemed to me a 
number of yards taller than was either the 
general or the two members of his statf. Gen- 
eral Marcy and another, who came in with him. 

Was there any apology made for keeping 
the President waiting ? Not a word, for Mr. 
Lincoln almost instantly asked a question 
which sent all other subjects of conversation, 
as it were, to the tombs of the Capulets. It 
must be said for General McClellan and his 
personal movements that he seemed the very 
impersonation of dash, vigor, firmness, de- 
cision. He had a vast amount of what is 
called personal magnetism. He now took a 



THE WRESTLING MATCH 131 

seat with a singular air of being not only at 
home, but altogether the master of the situa- 
tion, and again I felt my hot blood mounting. 
I was entirely cured by staring at Mr, Lin- 
coln ; for that strange, phenomenal smile of 
his was deepening. Kever mind, now, what 
were the subjects which were brought forward 
for discussion, or, rather, as it proved, for the 
patiently reached declaration of Mr. Lincoln's 
final decision. I was not there as a reporter, 
but only as the President's magnificent staff, 
in a gray sack suit, unsashed, unsworded. 

The President had at the first arisen to 
greet politel}^ the army men, as they came in 
to call upon him in what had suddenly changed, 
somehow, into a drawing-room of his own. 
He was evidently even pleased to see them, 
and w^as glad that they had taken the trouble 
to come down-stairs and learn from his own 
lips what orders he might have to give them. 

All of that, however, was said by his man- 
ner only, and not at all by words. The gen- 
eral felt, comprehended, and resented instantly. 
He was himself a perfect master of conversa- 
tional warfare. The slow, guarded, thought- 
ful exchange of brief sentences which followed 
became wonderfully interesting. It was a 
great wrestling-match, so to speak, between 
two extraordinary athletes. 



132 LINCOLN AT WORK 

There could be no question of the generars 
superiority in training, experience, all manner 
of information relating to military affairs. 
Mr. Lincoln admitted it, skilfull}', deferentially, 
and then that fact disappeared from the arena. 
As he himself once remarked, " Some kinds of 
powder can't be burnt but once." 

General McClellan had great will power, and 
he hardly tried to conceal his sense of the py- 
ramidal strength of his official and political 
position, Mr. Lincoln did not dispute it at all, 
and he listened quite respectfully to a very few 
deprecatory remarks made by General Marcy 
and the accompanying colonel, whoever he 
was. They also were respectfully aware of the 
superiority, at such a crisis, of the military au- 
thority over the absurdly elevated civil power. 

One listening could not but begin to see be- 
yond that drawing-room theatre and its wres- 
tlers. Not onl}'- awful battles, extended war 
operations, but political agitations also and fu- 
ture presidential elections, might be prophetic- 
ally discerned, taking dim shapes in a back- 
ground that was very near indeed. The future 
of the country. North and South, and in imme- 
diate particular, the policy, the direction, and 
the fate of the Lincoln administration, were 
being apparently wrestled for. So it appeared 
to one who saw and heard as a critical spec- 



THE WBESTLING-3IATCH 133 

tator, but so it was not, in reality. The room 
became more and more fnlly occupied by the 
incomparably stronger individuality of the tall, 
Titanic athlete to whom the victory was as- 
sured from the beginning. By no possibility 
could Mr. Lincoln have been overcome, and he 
carried point after point without the slightest 
appearance of making an effort. 

The general grew more and more deferen- 
tially courteous, less and less declaratory of his 
idea that the supreme command belonged to 
him. All manner of politics drifted out of 
sight, and only the coming movements of the 
several armies remained, to be left to him, skil- 
fully, by Mr. Lincoln, after their nature, in out- 
line, had been pretty fully set forth and agreed 
upon. 

The long interview, so extraordinary, so in- 
teresting, so important, came to an end at last. 
The colonel had gone to other duties long 
since, and only General McClellan and General 
Marcy remained. They were both unusually 
fine-looking men, and they bowed with grace 
and dignity as the civil power of the United 
States walked out of the house every whit as 
supreme as ever. 

What did I do ? 

Why, I had entirely recovered my unfortu- 
nate temper, and I walked along with Mr. 



134 



LINCOLN AT WORK 



Lincoln, looking up to him every now and tlien 
as if he were an exceedingly tall man. I think 
he laughed aloud once or twice ; but he did not 







" EVEKY WHIT AS SUPREBIE AS EVER." 



tell me why, and I did not go back to my work 
again that night, for the hour was late when 
the commander-in-chief and his staff re-entered 
the Executive Mansion. 




■EYOND a doubt, the people of the 
United States, learned or unlearned, 
are exceedingly critical. A very 
considerable part of them may also 
be described as fastidious! The number, vari- 
ety, and character of our periodicals, with their 
comparative prosperities, present all the infor- 
mation necessary upon this point. Any one 
interested in the study of it, however, may dis- 
cover somewhat more upon close investigation. 
Here and there, not by any means too fre- 
quently, he will find the marvel of a joke, a 
poem, an utterance of patriotism or of states- 
manship, which has been printed and reprinted 
in almost every journal, large or small. 

In every case the matter so perpetually re- 
appearing has been something brief, simple ; 
often it is plain even to homeliness. These are 
the things which pass the criticism of the 
masses, whatever opinion concerning them may 
be entertained by the fastidious minority. 
Now and then, even to this day, there have 
been utterances of this sort, sure to reach the 

135 



136 LINCOLN AT WORK 

minds and stir the hearts of the people, which 
for some reason call out the remark, " That 
reminds one of Abraham Lincoln." That this 
is so illustrates well the popular memory and 
thought which treasures yet his peculiar faculty 
for forcible expression. 

How, then, did he attain and how did he 
exercise his undeniable power in the exact uses 
of words and phrases ? Was he in the habit 
of striking off at random, like sparks from flint 
and steel, the fiery utterances which kindled 
instantly any combustible material in the minds 
and hearts of all who heard or read ? Not so. 
He had much in his' mind which was ready at 
any moment when demanded, and he could 
give an answer promptly enough and vigor- 
ously. It is not too much to say, however, 
that he never wrote or said anything intended 
by him to be of general effect and value with- 
out permitting it to take form slowly in his 
heart and brain in long processes of prepara- 
tion. 

It would be interesting in this connection to 
know the stages of the elaboration of his brief, 
seemingly almost spontaneous, but imperish- 
able, Gettysburg speech. A close analysis of 
its perfect sentences proves that it is a formu- 
lation of thoughts and feelings which belonged 
to the inner life of the speaker. It was there- 



UNCLE SAM'S WEB- FEET 137 

fore something like a jewel already polished 
that he took out of its casket and set forever 
in the memories of his countrymen. It is re- 
lated of him that his great Springfield speech 
in 1858, in which occurs the then tremendous 
declaration, "A house divided against itself 
cannot stand ; I do not believe this govern- 
ment can endure permanently, half slave and 
half free," was written a scrap at a time, day 
after day, on odds and ends of waste paper, old 
letter-backs, envelopes, and the like. These at 
last were collected and consolidated like the 
stones and timbers of a new building, the archi- 
tect fitting them well together and making the 
structure strong rather than elegant. Strenu- 
ous objection to the delivery of it was made 
by a number of his badly frightened friends. 

Something like this is true of the slow prep- 
aration of his Cooper Institute speech, and of 
his inaugural addresses. Conscientious care 
and long forethought with reference to acts as 
well as to forms of speech created in the minds 
of many observers an erroneous impression of 
slowness or hesitation ; but he could strike 
with fiery rapidity whenever an occasion called 
for promptness, and it was not by any means 
easy to take him unawares. 

Were you ever at any time suddenly trans- 
formed into a hundred millions of men and 



138 LINCOLN AT WORK 

women ? No ? "Well, I was once. Or, rather, 
I was changed into an actor, and was com- 
pelled to pose as the living representative of at 
least that number of })eople upon a stage which 
had no footlights. It was nothing, in fact, 
but a chair at one side of the long " cabinet- 
meeting table " in the President's room at the 
White House in the summer of 1863. Late 
one evening, after all others had left the busi- 
ness part of the house, I was in Mr. Nicolay's 
room, for some now-forgotten reason, when 
Mr. Lincoln came to the door of it with some 
sheets of foolscap paper in his hand. 

" Stoddard," he said, " come in here. iVe 
been writing something, and I want to read it 
to somebody." 

He turned round and went into his own 
room, going over to the opposite side of the 
long table. Llere he seated himself, pen in 
hand, his manuscript before him ; and I was 
dimly aware of an idea that I was altogether 
and merely "somebody." 

" I can always get a better idea of anything," 
he said, "after I've heard it read and know 
how it sounds." 

I began then to get another and very dif- 
ferent conception of my position. He was 
about to listen on behalf of his audience of a 
hundred million, and to study the effect upon 



UNCLE SA3f'S WEB- FEET 139 

them, not me. He was intending to enter 
into their minds, and to weigh and judge with 
them the force and meaning of his utterances. 
That is, Mr. Lincoln himself, by the vast and 
subtle outreaching of his imagination, was for 
the hour transformed into an almost world- 
wide audience, giving its verdict, sentence by 
sentence, upon a very memorable state paper. 
It was the long, yet wonderfully condensed, 
letter addressed to whom it might concern, 
through Hon. James C. Conkling, of Spring- 
field, HI., August 26, 1863. In this letter the 
President summed up the results of the war to 
that date, and defended with caustic power 
the policy of arming black soldiers for the de- 
fence of their newly acquired freedom. Be- 
sides this, it was a defence of the Emancipation 
Proclamation itself, then about a year old, and 
still dependent for its full and final effect upon 
the outcome of the war. To the mind's of 
many men, of the North as well as of the South, 
this result was still a matter of great uncer- 
tainty. Half of America and almost all of 
French or English-speaking Europe believed 
that the Confederacy would succeed, after all, 
in establishing an independent nationality. 
The Germanic peoples generally held an op- 
posite view, and were free purchasers of our 
national six-per-cent bonds. Even. they, how- 



140 LINCOLN AT WORK 

ever, were much in need of reassurance, and it 
was in this manner to be given them. The 
discontented, discouraged, or overcritical citi- 
zens of Illinois who had addressed their com- 
plaints to the President through Mr. Conkling 
were to serve an exceedingly important pur- 
pose of state. 

The letter itself shows, on examination, that 
first in importance of all who were to read 
it, to the mind of its author, were the true- 
hearted, self-sacrificing people who were sus- 
taining him. He knew that their saddened 
eyes were in those days continually turned to- 
ward him as if they were waiting, longing, hop- 
ing, that he might have something good to 
tell them. 

Not less was the value of that letter to the 
soldiers in their camps and the sailors on the 
ships and gunboats. It was well for the com- 
mander-in-chief, Avithout seeming to address 
them at all, to give them an encouraging out- 
line and a better understanding of the tre- 
mendous work which they had alread}'^ ac- 
complished. 

Just behind all these was the population of 
the Confederacy itself, or all that part of it 
which should by any means obtain a reading 
of the letter. It is now well known that they 
did, to a large proportion, obtain and read not 



UNCLE SA3I'S WEB-FEET 141 

only this, but many other of his public und 
private utterances. So deep was the effect 
thus produced upon them that at the close of 
the war they were already prepared to regard 
him as their well-known friend and as their 
especial security for good treatment in the 
hour of their helplessness. 

After the letter Avas printed, nevertheless, 
one would have supposed that its manner 
rather than its matter was of the greatest im- 
portance. The criticisms made upon it by 
the British journals which reprinted or did 
not reprint it, in whole or in part, were curi- 
ously largely of a literary character, as if it 
should have been prepared, or at least modi- 
fied, smoothed, softened, to suit transatlantic 
tastes and prejudices. Even these critics, how- 
ever, and others not so far away, revealed in 
their varied condemnations the fact that Mr. 
Lincoln had somehow accomplished his pur- 
pose, so far as they were concerned. 

His addressed American complainers were 
crushed out altogether, and it was only nat- 
ural that a large number of them took refuge 
in a high-toned denunciation of his false 
rhetoric. " Read this," they said contemp- 
tuously. " What are we to think of such utter 
frivolity in dealing with such terribly dark 
and dreadful circumstances ? Mr. Lincoln 



142 LINCOLN AT WORK 

ought at least to have had the good taste to 
strike out this ridiculous passage." The part 
which they made the most of read as follows : 
" Nor must Uncle Sam's web-feet be forgot- 
ten. At all the watery margins they have 
been present, not only on the deep sea, the 
broad bay, and the rapid river, but also up the 
narrow and muddy bayou, and wherever the 
ground was a little damp, they have been and 
made their tracks." 

Slowly, thoughtfully, listening to the sound 
of his own voice, the President read his letter 
through to the very end, his face changing its 
expression in remarkable accord with the 
spirit and force of each successive paragraph. 
My own interest, and with it my listening 
power, grew intense, and I was really some- 
thing more than a theatrical dummy ; for I, 
too, was listening for others. 

" Now," he said, as he threw the last of the 
sheets of paper upon the table and looked 
smilingly across at me, " what do you think 
of it?"" 

As an original anti-slavery man and as a 
" war Eepublican," I had only admiration and 
enthusiasm to express, and I made an effort to 
express them ; but his keen eye saw that I 
had something else on my mind. 

" Out with it ! " he said. " If you have any 



UNCLE SAM'S 'WEB-FEET 



143 



criticism to make, make it ; I 'd like to know 
what it is." 

It required much courage and firmness to 
comply, but I came up to the mark bravely, 
"Well, Mr. Lincoln, just in one place. Where 
you speak of Uncle Sam's web-feet " 




"What do you think of it?" 

A ringing laugh interrupted me. " Not ex- 
actly the thing, eh ? I thought you 'd point 
at that. I won't strike it out, though. The 
plain people will like it. It's just what I 
mean to say." 

I went back to my own room, and thought 
the matter over ; and it was not long before 



144 LINCOLN AT WORK 

I began to understand what he meant to say. 
Somehow or other, writing precisely as he did 
write, he had managed to express a terrific, 
biting, withering scorn for all false patriotism 
and its many hypocrisies, at the same time 
when he conveyed to other minds, from his 
own, the cheerfulness of a growing and vv^ell- 
grounded trust that the final victory of the 
national cause was already assured. In its 
immediate effect that letter was like the 
winning of a great battle, Avon for the Union 
armies by their commander-in-chief, sitting 
alone at his old-fashioned writing-desk by the 
•southerly window of the White House. 





INCOLN'SMfiSBlSCOVERT 




\ OMEBOD Y has asked the question, 
"Did President Lincoln ever ac- 
tually complain of being tired Ythys- 
ically?" Somebody else has as- 
serted that he was never seen to lie down in 
the daytime. There are not many persons now 
living who can testify accurately with refer- 
ence to these very unimportant matters of per- 
sonal history. In Mr. Lincoln's earlier day he 
was a remarkable pedestrian. He was also a 
good boxer, and was regarded as an all but 
unconquerable wrestler. It is recorded that 
he could lift over a half-ton avoirdupois. A 
man who could split rails all day and then read 
law all the evening afterward was assuredly 
a phenomenon of bodily endurance. In his 
many political campaigns his feats of contin- 
uous travelling and oratory have probably not 
been surpassed by the similar performances of 
any other man. 

It was after he became president of the 
United States that his toughness of both bodily 
and mental fibre received its severest testing, 

145 



146 LINCOLN AT WORK 

From the hour of his arrival in Washinffton in 
1861 the great burden of his responsibilities, 
not to be estimated by ton weights, rested 
upon his heart and brain rather than upon his 
corporeal shoulders. It was of this load that 
he spoke to a friend when he complained that 
it was slowly killing him. He was dying by 
inches internally, while his sinews were as good 
as ever. 

The continually arriving swarms of office- 
seekers were very little more than so many 
flies, some of them gadflies, to be endured 
philosophically and brushed away. They were 
time- wasters. His habits of all sorts were as 
regular as clockwork. The mere routine duties 
of the executive office began for him as soon 
as he was out of bed. He was often at work 
at his desk before breakfast. It may also be 
said that his toils continued, with but little in- 
terruption or relaxation, until he went to bed 
again ; and this was often at a late hour. 
Moreover, there may have been, before any 
great battle or after a great defeat, a night of 
sleeplessness when brain and heart worked on 
and when the body itself was unable to rest 
very well. 

As to his ever lying down in the daytime, I 
can distinctly remember a case in point. There 
was one particular occasion when Mr. Lincoln 



LINCOLN'S GEE AT DISCOVERY 147 

did lie down and in the forenoon. That he did 
so may have been in part because he was tired 
and the day was warm, but it was much more 
for an altogether different reason. 

In the spring of 18G4 a man by the name of 
Grant, already distinguished for remarkable 
efficiency in the West, was appointed to the 
command of all the land forces of the United 
States. Up to the date of his appointment he 
and Mr. Lincoln had not met, and their per- 
sonal acquaintanceship began under somewhat 
difficult circumstances. It is true that they 
had corresponded by mail and telegraph, but 
each was as yet a good deal of a stranger to 
the other. 

At the time of General Grant's arrival in 
Washington, to assume especially the direction 
of the Army of the Potomac, I was in bed 
with the typhoid fever. Weeks passed before 
I was able to return to my desk at the White 
House. When at last my convalescence reached 
the stage for walking about, I chose a Sunday 
morning for my first visit, not caring to en- 
counter the work-day throngs of all sorts. My 
latch-key let me into the house, and I walked 
around the lower floor, from room to room, 
without meeting anybody in particular. Then 
I climbed the stairs, and went to my own, the 
northeast room. I found my table heaped 



148 LINCOLN AT WORK 

with accumulated papers, which promised su- 
perabundance of work for me as soon as I 
should be able to get at it ; and I was glad to 
turn away. Across the hall was Mr. I^icolay's 
room, but neither he nor Colonel Hay was 
there. 

The hall door of the President's room was 
open, and I sauntered over toward it. I can 
remember that I was feeling blue and out of 
sorts, besides being nervously anxious about 
the political and military situation. I looked 
in ; and there was Mr. Lincoln stretched out at 
full length upon the sofa, his hands folded over 
the top of his head. Two cushions lifted his 
shoulders, and assisted in giving him a com- 
fortable, lounging position. There was a broad 
smile upon his face like contentment, and he 
only raised his head a little to speak to me, bid- 
ding me come in. I went and brouglit a chair 
to the sofa so that I could sit down facing him. 
Very kind, very encouraging were his inquiries 
about my illness and his advice concerning 
needful prudence. He had also instructions 
to give, and there were varied- topics for con- 
versation ; but I had a special inquiry in my 
mind, and I engineered an opportunity for 
making it. 

" Now, Mr. Lincoln," I said, " what sort of 
a man is Grant ? I 've never seen him. He 



LINCOLN'S GREAT DISCOVERY 149 

has taken hold here Avhile I have been laid up. 
What do you think of him ? " 

Up came the President, turning over and 
leaning upon an elbow ; and he laughed one of 
his long, peculiar, silent laughs before he re- 
plied : " Well, Stoddard, I hardly know what 
to think of him altogether. He 's the quietest 
little fellow I ever saw." 

" How is tliat ? " I persisted. 

" Wh}^, he makes the least fuss of any man 
you ever knew. I believe two or three times 
he has been in this room a minute or so before 
I knew he was here. It 's about so all around. 
The onlj^ evidence you have that he 's in any 
place is that he makes things git ! Wherever 
he is, things move ! " 

He was growing very much in earnest, and 
there was something like a glow upon his sal- 
low, deeply marked countenance. There were 
several other remarks made, or questions and 
answers, which I cannot now recall ; but my 
main point was reached at last. 

" But how about Grant's generalship ? " I 
ventured to inquire. " Is he going to be the 
man ?" 

As all are aware, that tremendous question 
had been asked by the President and by the 
nation of several successive commanders, and 
the responses had not been altogether satisfac- 



150 



LINCOLN AT WORK 



tory. Mr. Lincoln was now half sitting up, 
and he emphasized his reply with his long up- 
lifted forefinger. 

" Stoddard, Grant is the first general I 've 
had. He 's a general ! " 







■Geant is the first general I've had." 



" How do you mean, Mr. Lincoln ? " 
" Well, I '11 tell you what I mean. You know 
how it 's been with all the rest. As soon as I 
put a man in command of the army, he'd come 
to me with a plan of a campaign, and about as 
much as say, ' Now, I don't believe I can do it ; 
but, if you say so, I'll try it on,' and so put the 



LINCOLN'S GREAT DISCOVERY 151 

responsibility of success or failure upon me. 
They all wanted me to be the general. Now, 
it is n't so with Grant. He has n't told me what 
his plans are. I don't know, and I don't want 
to know. I 'm glad to find a man that can go 
ahead without me." 

I wanted to hear as much more as 1 could, 
and what I said next I dont know, but it net- 
tled him. It made him sit up on the sofa and 
talk right at me. 

" You see, Stoddard, when any of the rest 
set out on a campaign, they 'd look over matters 
and pick out some one thing they were short 
of and they knew I could n't give 'em, and tell 
me they couldn't hope to win unless they had 
it ; and it was most generally cavalry." 

Perhaps it was an absurd memory connected 
with past impossible army requisitions that 
made him pause and laugh so heartily, and he 
went on : " Now, when Grant took hold, I 
was waiting to see what his pet impossibility 
would be ; and I reckoned it would be cavalry, 
as a matter of course, for we hadn't horses 
enough to mount even what men we had. 
There were fifteen thousand, or thereabouts, 
up at Harper's Ferry, and no horses to put 
them on. Well, the other day Grant sends to 
me about those very men, just as I expected; 
but what he wanted to know was whether he 



152 LINCOLN AT WORK 

should make infantry of 'em, or disband 'em. 
He did n't ask impossibilities of me, and he 's 
the first general I 've had that didn't." 

It was plain enough, therefore, why he was 
lying down so cheerfully that sunny Sunday 
morning, No doubt he was tired, internally, 
perhaps externally ; but there was not any look 
of weariness upon his face. He would have 
been ready for and equal to any amount of 
mere bodily exertion. It was a sense of relief 
which had put him on the sofa. Somebody 
else was playing the part of Atlas for him, at 
last. He had discovered another pair of 
shoulders as strong as his own, and he believed 
that for military burdens they were stronger. 
He was not the only man who has found all 
his muscles and nerves relax under the grate- 
ful breath of deliverance. 

Long years afterward the substance of this 
conversation was repeated to Grant himself. 
It was after the close of his second presidential 
term. Already the question of Lincoln's in- 
terference with army management had been 
the subject of extended and acrimonious dis- 
cussion. The general's commentary upon Mr. 
Lincoln's somewhat humorous declaration cov- 
ering his own case as well as the careers of his 
less successful predecessors w^as exceedingly 
emphatic. Never, he said, at any time had the 



LINCOLN'S GREAT DISCOVERY 153 

President interfered with him. Always he 
had given unstinted, unquestioning support. 

The Sunday morning nap of the tired chief 
magistrate and commander-in-chief was there- 
fore a curious result and index of a great and 
welcome change wiiich had come. He had 
discovered a genuinely great general. 





5T4NT0N 





•OW! I want to hear it all. Tell 
it as rapidly as you can. Where 
did you go, and Avhat did you 
learn ? " 

There was no other person in the President's 
oiRce at the White House. He was sitting in 
a chair near the sofa, with a great upright rack 
of roller war-maps behind him. He had 
pointed me to a chair in front of him, and I sat 
down to make my report of affairs in the 
Southwest. The hall outside was crowded 
with people of all sorts and ranks, impatiently 
awaiting their turns to come in ; and they 
seemed to give a kind of emphasis to his 
demand for conciseness. Nevertheless, I had 
something -to tell that he was determined to 
hear before he would attend to an^^body else. 

" I went straight from here to St. Louis," I 
replied. "Then down the Mississippi to Mem- 
phis. From there I went up the White River 
to Duval's Bluff, and across country to Little 
Rock. I finished there, and went down the 
Arkansas River and up the Mississippi again. 

154 



TAKE THAT TO STANTON 155 

I went everywhere and talked with everybody, 
army men and civilians." 

" First, then, how about General Washburn 
and Memphis and West Tennessee. Is he all 
right ? " 

" Things there are all you could ask for, as 
to administration ; " and I was glad — for I liked 
Washburn — to be able to give a thoroughly 
good report of that important post and district, 
without any flaws or faultfinding. The Presi- 
dent also expressed great satisfaction, for evil 
tongues had been busy. 

" Now for Arkansas," said he. " How 
about the charges against General Steele ? " 

His face had put on an unusually dark and 
anxious look, and he was silently tapping the 
floor with one foot. 

" They are all nonsense ! " I said with some 
energy. " There is n't a dishonest hair in his 
head. He can't be held responsible, though, 
for all that 's going on in his department." 

" Of course not," said Mr. Lincoln, " but 
what is the real truth about the corn-contract 
frauds ? " 

" I guess I '11 have to tell you just how that 
is, Mr. Lincoln. The contractors did make a 
great deal of money, but the government 
didn't lose any." 

" I don't see how that can be," he interrupted 



156 LINCOLN AT WORK 

me, his face clouding more angrily. " I 'm glad 
about Fred Steele, though. I always liked 
him. I like his brother, too, that 's here in 
Congress. Finish your story about that corn. 
How was it ? " 

" Well," I responded, " the way of it was 
this : Just before Ave marched in the planters 
of the Arkansas River bottom-lands did n't 
care to put in any cotton. They had no mar- 
ket for it, you know. The Confederate army 
and other folks were sure to need corn, though ; 
and so all that tremendous stretch of country, 
best land in the world, was planted in corn. 
The crops came up fine. Sixty to a hundred 
bushels the acre, maybe. Then our troops 
came in, and the Confederate army marched 
away. So did most of the planters ; and the 
colored people took to their heels, every which 
way. There was the corn, and nobody to 
gather it. It wasn't the property of the 
Confederate government, so far as anybody 
knew ; and there was a great deal more of it 
than General Steele's army needed. So the 
contractors came in to prevent all those mag- 
nificent crops from being wasted. It pained 
them to think of so much good corn rotting in 
the field. They had all the contracts for sup- 
plying the Army of the Cumberland, the 
Army of the Tennessee, and as far down as 



TAKE THAT TO STANTON 157 

'New Orleans. They were to be paid, of 
course, at Illinois and Indiana prices ; and the 
contract figures were pretty good ones. They 
ran their own steamers up the Arkansas 
River from landing to landing, and at every 
tie-up place they found trains* of six-mule-team 
wagons heaped with splendid corn, just what 
our army needed. How the quartermasters 
came to be so kind as to land the wagons and 
teams I can't say, for I could n't prove it ; but 
every ear of that corn was husked by a Union 
soldier, black or white, on leave of temporary 
absence, or detailed for special service, at a 
dollar a day. The contractors got the 
corn." 

" And the boys got the money ? " 

" They told me they did, cash down, at the 
end of the day ; and they enjoyed the work ; 
and it made them feel like being at home 
again, you know." 

The President leaned back in his chair and 
laughed merrily, and then he studied hard for 
a moment, 

'' That 's all about that," he exclaimed. 
" The government was n't really robbed, after 
all. I '11 see about it. We 've more important 
matters on hand just now. "What I want to 
hear you tell is, how about the reports of 
cruelty to prisoners of war by any of our 



158 



LINCOLN AT WORK 



commanders down 3'onder ? Tell me exactly 
what you found out about that." 

" There is n't any truth in those accusations, 
Mr. Lincoln. Not one word, from first to 
last." 







(V^ 



=<?i)V'''' jV 



y 






,, J 



t'w^ 



"Every ear was husked by a Union soldier." 

" As to the guerrillas, I mean." 

" Even as to them our generals and post 
commanders are entirely innocent. They 
have been exceedingly lenient. There is a 



TAKE THAT TO STANTON 159 

kind of story, there, though. I got it first 
from some Arkansas people, and then, a little 
straighter, from a cavalry sergeant while I 
was riding across from the White Kiver to the 
Arkansas. lie was in command of the escort 
they gave me. I saw what regiment he be- 
longed to, and I asked him : * Sergeant, what 
did you and your boys do with the squad of 
Sash Watkin's guerrillas that you took week 
before last ? Did you let 'em go, or did they 
get away ? ' He looked me in the eye for a 
moment, and then he laughed and said : ' Colo- 
nel, if you Avas under Steele here, I'd never 
tell you ; but, seein' it's you, I just will. Do 
you see that neck o' woods away yonder, 
south? That's where we took 'em. They 
were the worst kind, you know. Cutthroats, 
every man of 'em. There was thirteen of 'em.' 
There he held in, and I asked him again, 
' Well, did they get away, or did you let 'em 
go ? ' ' Colonel,' he said, ' I did n't reckon you 
knew about that. Anyhow! So! We had 
plenty o' rope, and so we let 'em go.' " 

" I don't quite get it," interposed Mr. Lin- 
coln. " How is it ? " 

" The trouble was," I went on, " that these 
robbers were ruining the country. They were 
torturing, murdering, burning houses, destroy- 
ing everything. General Dick Taylor, on the 



160 LINCOLN AT WORK 

Confederate side, made a kind of tacit agree- 
ment with General Steele that all guerrillas 
were to be shot on sight, and Taylor's men 
lived up to it pretty well, to protect their own 
people. Our boys at first would only bring 
'em in and report 'em, and after that they 
were treated mostly as prisoners of war, or 
discharged as civilians not liable to be held or 
exchanged. You see, that sent them back 
again to their old work worse than ever. 
Then our boys got their blood up, and they 
did n't take the trouble to bring in any more 
guerrillas. The point of it is, Mr. Lincoln, 
that, if a captured guerrilla was marched out 
of a camp, and given a start of say fifty yards, 
and told to run his best, and if good shots be- 
gan to practise on him at a fifty yards' range, 
why, then, if they did n't hit him, he got away, 
and the boys could report it, if they cared to 
mention it at all. Now, if he was a very bad 
case indeed, and if he was given a mule to 
ride home on, and if a rope from a tree over- 
head had a loop at the end of it that was slip- 
knotted around his neck, a cut of a whip would 
start that mule on a run. There was no need 
then for making any report of that cutthroat. 
They had let him go." 

The President was silent, and his face was 
darkly cloudy. He even shut his eyes and sat 



TAKE THAT TO STANTON 161 

very still for a moment. Then he picked up a 
card and wrote something on it. 

" Stoddard," he said as he wrote, " go and 
make your report to Stanton at once, just as 
you 've made it to me. All of those papers 
[naming them] can be quashed at once, and 
I 'm very glad of it. But Stanton must know 
right off." 

" He 's so crowded over there," I said, " I 
don't know that he '11 see me." 

" Hand in that," he replied, giving me the 
card. " He must see you instantly." 

There were various matters in my report 
concerning affairs in the Southwest in which 
the secretarjT^ of war might be supposed to be 
interested, and I hurried over to the war office. 
It was in the second story of the old brick 
building west of the White House. The hall- 
way leading to the rooms occupied by the sec- 
retary was almost densely thronged with army 
officers of all grades, from major-general down, 
with Senators, Congressmen, and other bril- 
liant civilians also. I once more doubted my 
chances for seeing the somewhat brusque war 
minister that day ; but Mr. Lincoln's card 
went in, and I did not have to wait a minute. 
His own room, with its corps of clerks and 
aides, had no privacy, and he led me out of it 
to a little coop of a Avaiting-room at the end 



162 LINCOLN AT WORK 

of the hall, with no furniture in it but a divan 
sofa before the window. On this we sat 
down, and he cross-questioned me thoroughly. 
He seemed as pleased as the President had 
been at my exonerations of prominent army 
officers. 

He was saying as much emphatically, when 
one of his clerks came excitedly in, and handed 
him several wide slips of the thin yellow paper 
on which telegraphic despatches from the 
army were generally duplicated, Mr. Stanton 
took and read, and at once handed a set of the 
slips to me. " Read that, Mr. Secretary ! " he 
shouted. "Read that! Take it to his Ex- 
cellency ! Fast as you can go ! It's the turn- 
ing-point of the war ! Hurrah ! No more 
work in this office to-day ! " 

Out he dashed into the hall, and he was ac- 
tually jumping up and down while he roared 
into that jam of patriotic celebrities the first 
complete news of Sheridan's great victory in 
the valley of Virginia, over General Early. 
Away I went to the Executive Mansion. On 
the way I met others, to whom I shouted my 
tidings ; but I did not delay a moment in 
reaching Mr. Lincoln's room, a kind of small 
procession rushing in with me. The rush 
grew fast as I handed Mr. Lincoln the de- 
spatches and told him not only what was in 



TAKE THAT TO STAXTON 



1(33 



them, but also the very remarkable effect they 
had produced upon the secretary of war. 

" I think so, I think so," he remarked as he 
read ; " I guess we'll shut up shop, too. I 




"Read that!" 



don't know that I care to do any more work 
to-day." 

None of the rest of us did, at all events, and 
the White House, like the war office, obtained 
almost a half-holiday in which to celebrate 
Phil Sheridan's famous " turning-point of the 
war." 





T™ VOICE %,^m 3°^ ^"' SOUTH 



JNCE there came a great and sudden 
change to all the people of the 
United States North and South, 
So great and unexpected a calam- 
ity fell upon them that everywhere all men 
and women stood still and looked into one an- 
other's faces, inquiring : " What shall we do 
now ? How shall we go on without Lincoln ? " 

The most tremendous chapter in the later 
history of the republic was ended ; but the 
book was not closed, and what might next be 
written was apparently beyond all human cal- 
culation. 

Just before this change the days had been 
full of uproarious rejoicing over the return of 
peace. It had been thankfully believed that 
order and prosperity would speedily return, 
after the long confusion and misery of the 
Civil War, under the guidance of the strong 
hand and steady brain which all the world had 
learned to trust so welh 

Lincoln was dead, and with him had passed 
away the assured and settled policy which he 

164 



THE VOICE OF THE SOUTH 165 

embodied. The terrible tidings went out over 
the wires to all corners of the country, and it 
flashed out under the sea to all the inhabited 
earth. In all harbors the flags of the ships 
came down to half-mast, and on the flagstaffs 
of all forts and camps, while the solemn thun- 
ders of the minute-guns sounded the requiem 
of the murdered President of the United 
States. 

After that there were daj^s of an almost na- 
tional palsy, and recovery from it hardly came 
until after the passage from the East to the 
West of the most remarkable funeral proces- 
sion that the earth has ever witnessed. 

There have been numberless word-pictures 
of the manner in which the tidings of Abra- 
ham Lincoln's assassination were received in 
many cities and towns of this and other coun- 
tries, and these assist greatly in obtaining a 
correct impression of the position which he 
occupied in the hearts and minds of those who 
would naturally be expected to honor him. 

Somewhat less complete is the general under- 
standing of the efl'ect produced by the sad 
event upon the people of the vanquished Con- 
federacy and upon some other of our varied 
national elements as they then existed. It is 
true, however, that Mr. Lincoln had become 
wonderfully well understood by the people of 



166 LINCOLN AT WORK 

the Southern States, in spite of all that had 
been said against him. 

Our telegraphic system was then not at all 
what it is now. For instance, there was yet a 
great break in its lines at the mouth of the 
Ohio Eiver at Cairo. The wires began again, 
in one direction, at Duval's Bluff, on the White 
Kiver, in Arkansas. Between this point and 
Cairo, and between Duval's Bluff and Memphis, 
Tenn., a nearer point, all communication was 
by steamboat. There was therefore a delay 
of many hours in the arrival of the dread news 
at the headquarters of the Seventh Army Corps 
at Little Ttock, Ark. The Southwest had been 
even more bitterly secession in feeling and de- 
termination than any of the Middle or Atlantic 
Southern States. There were yet armed forces 
in the field, refusing to disband or surrender ; 
and the people generally were outspokenly 
fierce with all the burning animosity of de- 
feat. 

The dawn Avas barely showing on the morn- 
ing of the second day after the assassination. 
The sky Avas clear, promising one of the warm, 
bright days of the Southern spring. At a lit- 
tle distance back from the southerly bank of 
the Arkansas River, and near the middle of 
the town, stood the old-fashioned, worn-out- 
looking State House, surrounded by leafless 



THE VOICE OF THE SOUTH 167 

trees. In one wing of this building, on the 
lower floor, was the office of the United States 
marshal. It was also my sleeping-room at the 
time, and at night contained two narrow camp 
beds, for my brother was with me, an officer 
in the Seventh. The sun had not yet risen 
when I suddenly found myself sitting up in 
bed and listening. 

" Harry ! " I exclaimed. " Hark ! Do you 
hear that ? It 's a heavy gun from one of the 
forts. What can that mean ? " 

"The Confederates?" he said. "It can't 
be that they are attacking. Preposterous." 
. " Listen ! Count ! There it comes again. 
That 's a minute-gun ! Get up, Harry ! Secre- 
tary Seward is dead." 

The meaning of that was that the illness of 
the great New York statesman had been re- 
ported as possibly fatal, and my brother and I 
had been brought up as his strong personal 
admirers. We began at once to recall our 
pleasant memories of his kindnesses to us, 
and to sympathize with his family. Hardly, 
however, were we upon our feet before there 
came an excited hammering at the door. I 
went to open it, and an officer thrust in his 
bare head to exclaim huskily, " Colonel, Presi- 
dent Lincoln has been assassinated ! Don't 
you hear the guns ? The news just came 1 " 



168 LINCOLN AT WORK 

Away he went, and we stood still for a 
moment, as if stunned. 

"We must put on our black suits, Harry. 
Only black, from head to foot." 

So we did, but the nearest thing to mourn- 
ing goods that we could muster was our dinner 
dress suits. We put them on in haste, yet 
slowly; and then we walked out through the 
State House grounds to what w^as then the 
main street. Hardly had we reached it when 
we saw a large, portly man coming up the 
avenue. In one hand he carried a long, heavy, 
naked bowie-knife ; in the other hand a red 
silk handkerchief, with which he now and then 
wiped his face. 

" Lincoln is dead ! Lincoln is dead ! D — n ! " 
— for this man Avas weeping bitterly and swear- 
ing, pouring forth angry curses upon the wretch 
wdio had slain the good President. He had 
been a Confederate Army officer, and also a 
civil court official under the general Confeder- 
ate government. He did not look at us or 
speak to us, and we walked on. He was in 
many respects a representative man, belonging 
to the educated higher class of the Southwest. 

Not many yards beyond him Ave met a short, 
gnarled, rugged sort of man who had been a 
native Arkansas Unionist. He was of unusual 
intelligence, and had recently been elected to 



THE VOICE OF THE SOUTH 



1G9 



Congress by one of the Mississippi Kiver 
districts. He, too, was crying like a child as 
he walked along, talking to himself about this 




Lincoln is dead! Lincoln is dead!" 



disaster to the South; and he was all the 
while swearing fiercely, as one who did not 
know or care what he was saying. Not a 
word did he speak to either of us, although he 



170 LINCOLN AT WORK 

knew us well ; and we passed on as two men 
who were dreaming. 

Wandering near a line of shanties that were 
occupied by colored people, we saw a number 
of men and women, half-clad, hurrying out to 
fasten rude strips of black stuff at their 
humble doorways. All of these were mourn- 
ing loudly, as if they had lost their father. 

More and more did it seem like some im- 
probable dream, but only a few minutes later 
I had to spring forward and restrain some 
Union soldiers who were dashing furiously 
along with their knives out, in hot pursuit of a 
fugitive who was barely rescued from them. 
" Why, Colonel," they told me, " we ought to 
kill him ! When he heard of Lincoln's murder, 
he said it was good enough for him ! " 

They obe}*ed me, nevertheless, even Avhile 
they still angrily asserted that such fellows 
ought to be shot or hanged. I can now re- 
member distinctly the bewildered, puzzled ex- 
pression on the war-bronzed faces of those 
men. 

The next squad of soldiers that we saw came 
running to me with a vociferous complaint. 

"Colonel!" they shouted. "Old Bernays 
is opening his liquor store ! We told him not 
to!" 

I had ordinarily only a doubtful authority in 



THE VOICE OF THE SOUTH 171 

any such direction, but this was an unusual 
case. 

" Go back ! " I replied. " Tell him to shut 
up at once. The provost marshal's men will 
close every store in Little Rock as fast as it 's 
opened. Tell him he must n't think of selling 
any liquor to-day." 

With shouts of gratification the brave fel- 
lows ran back to deal with the unfeeling con- 
duct of " old Bernays." 

Orders from the military authorities went 
out rapidly, that the peace might be preserved 
during such a time of excitement, but the 
next development came as a complete sur- 
prise. 

Before and even during the Civil War, 
Little Rock had been a notable headquarters 
of the Masonic fraternity. They had there a 
college building of their own. Not only were 
they numerous and zealous, but they included 
a large majority of the best citizens of the 
town and the wealthiest of the neighboring 
phmters. 

They were therefore peculiarly an influen- 
tial and representative body of men. Any 
action taken by them might without question 
be regarded as expressing vastly more than 
merely local thought or feeling, 

I had finished my breakfast, and had con- 



172 LINCOLN AT WORK 

versed with a number of Union, officers at the 
hotel and at the headquarters of General 
Reynolds, commanding the department. I 
had also been at the United States District 
Courtroom, drafting the necessary memorial, 
by ojder of the district judge, to be entered 
upon the court records. I vvas coming out of 
the State House when I was confronted by a 
committee sent by the "Confederate Ma- 
sons," as they were sometimes called. Their 
errand was to inform me that a " lodge of sor- 
row" was to be held at noon that day at their 
hall, and that they washed me to come and 
deliver a funeral address upon Abraham Lin- 
coln. In his death, they sadly declared, they 
believed the people of the South had received 
their last and most disastrous blow. They had 
now lost the one true friend upon whom they 
had relied for sure protection in the dark 
future which was opened before them by the 
result of the war. 

There could be no refusal of such a request, 
and I went with them to a yet more complete 
surprise. The hall was crowded with sombre- 
faced men, a large part of whom were ex- 
Confederate officers and soldiers, not a few, 
indeed, yet wearing their army uniforms. 

Resohitions of respect and of fervid regret 
were offered, and were adopted unanimously. 



THE VOICE OF THE SOUTH 173 

Never did I have a more attentive audience or 
one tliat was seemingly in more perfect accord 
with the spirit of what I was saying. That 
was not all, either. That evening I was again 
called upon to make a funeral address. 

A densely packed assembly of Union 
soldiers and of the citizens generally of Little 
Kock gathered in the hall of the House of Ilep- 
resentatives in the State House. Not even 
here, however, could I discern any expression 
of bereavement more sincere, more heartfelt, 
than I had seen in the noon gathering at the 
Masonic Hall. The whole was wonderful, 
such as might never be forgotten, a sort of 
flood of uncontrolled and uncontrollable feel- 
ing. Nevertheless, not the least striking fea- 
ture of the mourning for Lincoln was the fact 
that the first " lodge of sorrow " of any kind, 
south of the Ohio River, was composed of the 
most intelligent as well as the most determined 
of the supporters of the " lost cause " which 
he had smitten to its death. 



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